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LECTURES 



ON 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 



BY 



WILLIAM E. WILLIAMS. 



" Petitions, brief in the wording, but withal large in the meaning. Insomuch that thia 

Prayer can scarce be expounded completely by all tbe theologians that are in the world. In 
these * * * are asked all the things which are needful unto us in this present life and in that 
which is to come." — Old Waldensian Gloss on the Lord's Prayer. — " Glosa Pater Noster." 
Legcr L 42. 



BOSTON: 
OOULD AND LINCOLN, 

59 WASHINGTON STREET. 

NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. 
CINCINNATI : GEO. S. BLANCHARD. 

1865. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, fef 
WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, 

js the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of the State of New York, 



ThebL'Sem, 



JAN 24 t»0* 



TEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 
216 WILLIAM STREET N T. 



TO 

THE CHURCH AND CONGREGATION 

IN AMITY STREET, NEW YORK, 

WHOM, IN THE MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEL, 

IT HAS LONG BEEN THE HONOR OF THE SUBSCRIBER TO SERVE, 

THESE IMPERFECT 

DISCOUKSES, 

DISCUSSING A DUTY OF PERPETUAL OBLIGATION, 
AND A THEME OF EXHAUSTLESS RICHNESS, 

BY AN ATTACHED AND GRATEFUL PASTOR. 



PREFACE. 



As the utterance of Want, and the aspiration of Hope, 
prayer would seem the prompting of human instincts, no less 
than the requirement of Divine Eevelation. To urge, to guide 
and to warrant it, the Book of God furnishes us alike with com- 
mands, with promises and with examples. Chief amongst these 
last, stands the form of supplication given by our Lord, on one 
occasion, to his disciples and the multitude with them who 
heard the Sermon upon the Mount ; and on another, with some 
changes of form, received again by his followers, when they 
asked from Him such instructions on prayer as were given by 
John the Baptist to his disciples. The treatises which have 
been written in comment upon the Lord's Prayer, as it has 
generally been called, would form of themselves no inconsider- 
able library. Nearly every system of theology ever written 
has incorporated, into its texture, a minute and regular analysis 
of this brief but most comprehensive supplication. Luther, and 
Barrow, and Jeremy Taylor, and Archbishop Leighton have 
written upon it ; and the treatises, especially of the first and 
the last, are marked with peculiar richness and excellence. In 
the commentary upon the Sermon on the Mount, of the illustrious 
German scholar Tholuck, one of the finest specimens of learned 
and devout exposition in our times, this prayer is of course made 
to pass under review ; and it is also the subject of several separate 
discourses amongst his published Sermons. It is taken up, with 
yet greater fulness, by another contemporary Christian and scholar 



Vlll PREFACE. 

of that country, Stier, in his valuable work on the Discourses of 
the Saviour, one of the fruits of that hopeful and blessed re-action 
which, under the auspices of great learning and sound judgment, 
has been commenced in that land of profound research. It is 
a re-action against the proud inroads of a proscriptive neology 
and a critical destructiveness, which seemed once to assume that 
whatever had been believed was in consequence incredible, and 
that the New and the True were always for the hour convertible 
terms. Of this our Lord's framework for the petitions of his 
Church, Stier has happily said, that whilst from its brief simplicity, 
it fits the lips of childhood in the first stammerings of devotion, 
it displays an infinite fulness also, which the convened wisdom of 
all the theologians of all the churches could never exhaust, much 
less surpass. 

It is indeed one of the marks of the divine authorship of this 
brief document, that fitting as it does all hearts, and adapted 
as it is to all times and scenes, it yet preserves a freshness and 
richness which the new emergencies and the new applications of 
each successive century seem only the more to enhance and 
illustrate. And this feature of the prayer must be pleaded as 
an apology, for what might else seem rashness in sending forth 
a new series of remarks upon a portion of scripture already so 
fully discussed, and by men of highest renown and worth in the 
churches. Amidst all its perpetual and immovable Unity, the 
Lord's Prayer has its boundless and inexhaustible Variety. In 
the life of every human being, how much there is of sameness, 
in the journey from the same cradle to the same grave ; and 
yet if written in detail, no two pilgrimages would be found in 
all things coincident, each having its own peculiar and novel 
and characteristic incidents. And as every life has thus its 
freshness, — so the application, — to the life of each individual 
and to the social life of each nation and of each century, — of 
the language furnished here by the great Ruler of that life,—- 



PREFACE. IX 

will oe found to reflect back ever new lights upon the oracles 
which He has given, and to produce new and irrefragable evi- 
dences, that the Maker of man's heart and the divine Orderer 
of man's history was the Framer of this petition. It proves the 
all-pervading Omniscience of its authorship, by so wondrously 
bending itself, w r ith a divine pliability, to all man's new wants ; 
and by its bringing within the compass of a few, brief sentences, 
not only the interests and necessities of a world, but the crav- 
ings and destinies of the race alike for Time and for Eternity. 

As an instance that Time and Change only find new and out- 
gushing richness in this utterance of our Redeemer, making it 
still a stream of fresh and living waters to our own age after the 
lapse of eighteen centuries, we may allude to two recent com- 
ments upon the Lord's Prayer, the one appearing in France, and 
the other in Great Britain. Coquerel, an eloquent Protestant 
preacher of Paris, and a member of the Constituent Assembly 
which shaped the last political constitution of that country, 
published not long since his discourses on this portion of our 
Lord's teachings,* with an evident bearing, throughout his re- 
marks, upon the theories of social reform that have been so 
eagerly and boldly presented by some of the thinkers of his 
nation. Holding unhappily some views of vital religious doc- 
trine, which Calvin and Beza, Claude and Dumoulin, the ear- 
lier glories of the French Protestants, would denounce as por- 
tentous and fatal heresies ; he exerts himself against some of the 
social novelties of his age with zeal and energy, and whilst 
discussing the petition for daily bread has evidently Proudhon 
and other contemporary schemers in full and hostile survey. 
Himself an innovator in theology, as the early reformers would 
hold him, he shrinks appalled from some of the political and 
civil encroachments of the fierce and rugged theorists around him. 

* "L'Oraison Dominicale, Huit Sermons par Alhanase CoquereL 
Paris. Cherbuliez. 1850." 



X PREFACE. 

On the other hand the Rev. F. D. Maurice, a scholar of the 
Established Church of England, attached probably rather to the 
party of Authority and Order than to that of Zeal and Reform, 
sympathizing more with those called generally the Orthodox 
High Churchmen than with those whose usual designation is the 
Evangelical party, — and holding besides his Professorship in 
King's College, London, the Lectureship of Lincoln's Inn, an 
appointment connecting him with the bar and bench of England, 
and one held before him by a Warburton and a Heber, — 
has, notwithstanding all these bonds to the Established and the 
Ancient, in a recent volume of discourses on this same prayer,* 
manifested throughout a disposition to appreciate and meet, far 
as may be, the schemes and claims of those modern reformers 
who hold that Poverty and Labor now demand grave and com- 
prehensive measures of relief. In an earlier book of much 
ability on the Kingdom of Christ, moulded probably with some 
reminiscences of Moehler's great work on Symbolism, he had 
endeavored to place the claims of Episcopacy and the Establish- 
ment on the one hand, and those of the various bodies holding 
aloft the standard of Nonconformity, on the other hand, in a 
position where each might better comprehend the arguments 
and wishes of the other. It was an endeavor to do in the 
interests of Episcopacy as against Nonconformity, what Moehler 
had sought to accomplish in behalf of Romanism, as against 
the various forms of Protestantism. The same traits show 
themselves in his more recent and briefer volume on the Lord's 
Prayer ; but the party whose claims he, in this later work, at 
times parries, and at other times adopts and expounds under 
new and Christian forms of expression, is that of Social Reform, 
The British and the French thinker, then, writing apparently 

* " The Lord's Prayer. Nine Sermons preached in the Chapel of 
Lincoln's Inn, by Frederick Denison M aurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's 
Inn. London. Parker. 1848." 



PREFACE. XI 

without any reference to the works each of the other, and with 
few or no doctrinal sympathies, show how this simple prayer of 
our Lord, given eighteen centuries ago to Jewish peasants, on. a 
hill-side in Palestine, is regarded, in the two great nations of 
modern Europe, as shedding new and authoritative light, on 
the novel and startling controversies of a revolutionary age. 
And such indeed is its power, ancient but fresh, like the light 
streaming to-day anew, from the same sun which shone on that 
hill-side on the day when our Lord first gave this form of prayer. 
Successive generations may thus bask in the fresh showers of light 
continually poured from the same eternal Sun of Righteousness. 

And as still new might and ever-freshening light are to be 
evolved from this, God's word, in the future ; so is it impossible, 
in reviewing the past, to overvalue and exaggerate the amount 
of healing and restraining energy which this single prayer has 
already shed forth on the heart, the home, the sanctuary, the 
school, the nation and the race. How many a snare has it 
broken ; how many a sorrow has it soothed ; how many a gath- 
ering cloud of evil has it averted or scattered. Could we write 
the history of mankind, as it will by the Judge of all be read 
in the Last Day, how much of earth's freedom and order and 
peace, would be found to have distilled, through quiet and se- 
cret channels, from the fountain, full and exhaustless, of this 
single prayer. It has hampered the wickedness which it did 
not altogether curb ; and it has nourished individual goodness 
and greatness in the eminence of which whole nations and ages 
have rejoiced. 

"What forming energy has gone forth from the single charac- 
ter of Washington upon the destinies of our own land and 
people, not only in the days of our Revolution, but through 
each succeeding year. He only who reads that heart which He 
himself has fashioned can fully and exactly define the various 
influences which served to mould the character of that eminent 



Xll PREFACE. 

patriot; yet every biographer has attributed much of what 
George "Washington became, to the parental training and the 
personal traits of his mother. To Paulding, in his Life of 
Washington, we owe the knowledge of the fact that this Chris- 
tian matron daily read to her household, in the youth of her 
son, the Contemplations of Sir Matthew Hale, the illustrious and 
Christian Judge. The volume is yet cherished in the family, as 
an heir-loom, and bears the marks of much use : and one of its 
Essays, "the Good Steward," is regarded by the biographer, 
as having especially left its deep and indelible traces, on the 
principles and character of the youth whom God was rearing 
for such high destinies. And certainly, either by the direct 
influence of the book and its lessons on the son, or by their 
indirect effect upon him through that parent revering and daily 
consulting the book, the Christian jurist and statesman of Bri- 
tain, seems, in many of his characteristic traits, to have re- 
appeared in this the warrior and patriot to whom our own country 
gives such earnest and profound gratitude. The sobriety, the 
balanced judgment, the calm, dignity, the watchful integrity 
shunning the appearance of evil, the tempered moderation, the 
controlling good sense, carried to a rare degree that made it 
mightier than what is commonly termed genius, — all were kin- 
dred traits, strongly developed in the character alike of the 
English and of the American worthy. In Washington's char- 
acter, this seems among its strangest and rarest ornaments, its 
judicial serenity maintained amidst the fierce conflicts of a Rev- 
olution — the composure of the Areopagus carried into the 
struggles of Thermopylae.* Now the work of Hale, thus tho 
household manual in the dwelling of the youthful Washing- 

* u Calm, but stern ; like one whom no compassion could weaken, 
Neither could doubt deter, nor violent impulses alter : 
i Lord of his own resolves, — of his own heart absolute master." 

( Sduthey (of Washington) m hit Vision of Judgment 



PREFACE. Xlll 

ton, contains a long, labored and minute series of Medita- 
tions on the Lord's Prayer. How much of the stern virtue 
that shone serenely over the troubled strifes of the Common- 
wealth and Protectorate, and over the shameless profligacy and 
general debasement of the restored Stuarts, came from the 
earnest study of that Prayer, only the Last Day can adequately 
show. We can see, from the space it occupies in Hale's volume, 
what share the supplication had in his habitual and most sacred 
recollections. We seem to recognize, — in his earnest importu- 
nate deprecation of the sins from which society held him singu- 
larly free, and in his urgent and minute supplications for all grace 
and for those especial excellencies, in which his age and land 
pronounced him to have most eminently attained, — the secret 
of his immunity and his virtue. Is it fanciful or credulous to 
infer, that, directly or indirectly, — -in his own acquaintance person- 
ally with the work, or in his inherited admiration of the author's 
character, — our Washington derived his kindred excellencies 
from Hale ; and that healing virtue thus streamed from the robes 
of the Saviour on the Mount, as He enunciated this form of sup- 
plication — streamed across wide oceans, and intervening centuries, 
into the heart and character and influence of him whom our 
people delight to hail as the Father of his country ? 

No human analysis can disintegrate from the virtue and free- 
dom and prosperity of modern Christendom, the proportion and 
amount of it, which is distinctly owing to the influence of this 
single supplication. 

With these views of the past and coming influence of this 
Divine composition, each Christian teacher may be allowed, 
again and again, to recall the attention of his flock to such a 
fountain, whose streams have this power from God of perpetual 
vitality, and roll forth through each tract of time, their all-heal- 
ing and ever-freshening waters, — one source of that river which 
41 maketh glad the city of God." W. R. W. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
PREFACE. . vii 



LECTURE I. 
"our father which art in heaven, # . .1 

LECTURE II. 
"hallowed be thy name, . • . . . .25 

LECTURE III. 
"thy kingdom come, 51 

LECTURE IV. 
"thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, . 77 

LECTURE V. 

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, . . .107 



XVI CONTENTS, 

LECTURE VI. 

Page 
"iJND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE FORGIVE OUR 

DEBTORS. 131 



LECTURE VII. 
"and lead us not into temptation, • 157 

LECTURE fill. 

"BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL, 183 

LECTURE IX, 

•'FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND 

THE GLORY, FOREVER. AMEN." .... 205 

APPENDIX, .••*••••• 227 



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LECTURE L 

"(Dur /atjjfr inljirjr Kit in W>tmm" 

Matthew, vl 9. 

With what eagerness of devout curiosity, should 
we have listened to the instructions of a Jacob or a 
David, as to the appropriate form and spirit of prayer. 
Had they come to tell us the exact shape of those, 
their most memorable supplications, which they had 
offered in some hour of impending peril, that God's 
responding grace had made the eve of a great and re- 
splendent deliverance ; — the lesson would be doubly 
welcome, from the experience of its availability. 
Imagine that we could learn from the patriarch, yet 
halting from his night-long conference with Grod, the 
sentences that burst from his fainting soul in the 
dread struggles at Peniel, when man wrestled with 
his Maker ; — or did the Shepherd Psalmist recount to 
us the petitions he had offered as he went, with sling in 
hand, a slender stripling, to the encounter of Goliath ; 
— or had we from Elijah the words that last quitted 
his lips, in the shape of intercession for Elisha his 
disciple, or for Israel his nation, ere his foot stepped 



2 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

from our earth into the chariot of fire ; — or, could 
Daniel return to write down for us the exact prayer, 
which, on the memorable night passed by him in the 
den, had sealed the mouths of the lions around him ; 
— we should expect much advantage from instructors 
thus experienced, and much aid from pleadings thus 
proved to be effectual in some terrible emergency. 
They would bear, as it were, in the seal of success, 
the attestation of Heaven to their genuineness and 
worth as prayer. 

But none of all these holy men would know as 
much of prayer, or have won as much in prayer as the 
wonder-working Teacher, who here tells his disciples 
how to pray. Had Elijah opened the windows of 
Heaven, though for years closed, again to send down 
the descending rain? This greater prophet opened 
the gates of Heaven, else through eternity barred and 
impenetrable, for the ingress of ascending sinners. 
Had Daniel's cry muzzled the lions ? The dying cry 
of this mightier Saint, — this Lord of Saints, — quelled 
the ravening lions of Hell, and ransomed Earth from 
the dominion of him who as a roaring lion goeth about 
seeking whom he may devour. Is it not more than a 
trivial gain, to have as our teacher in prayer, the Ad- 
vocate who ever liveth, and who in his intercessions 
never yet has failed ? The best of mere men have 
often offered mistaken and fruitless prayers ; but 
Jesus never asked wrongly or asked vainly. They 
wrestled in prayer, it may be, under the intolerable 
weight of Need, and Sin and Despair ; but which of 
their spiritual agonies of importunity, can be put in 



LECTURE I. 3 

comparison with the prayers which, — intermingled 
with groans, and tears, and with outbursting blood, 
and going up it were blent with the last wail of the 
outcrushed soul, — consecrated the garden of Greth- 
semane and the cross of Calvary? Who understands 
the fitting themes and the appropriate tempers of 
prayer like that Mediator, through whose priestly 
censer all human prayer of true potency has streamed 
and will stream, from the days of antediluvian Enoch 
to those of the last millennial convert ? 

Did our Lord intend to teach us by this the use of 
a set and invariable form of words in our devotions ? 
Was it the first instalment of a liturgy? Against 
that supposition are several facts. In Luke's gospel, 
our Saviour seems, on another occasion, to have re- 
peated the substance of this form with some impor- 
tant changes and omissions. Does not this imply 
■'that the original purpose of the prayer was, that it 
should serve as a model rather than as a mould ? Is 
it not something, by the spirit and order and propor- 
tions of whose several parts, we should guide our own 
spontaneous petitions, rather than a rigid and iron 
enclosure, within whose verbal and literal bounds all 
our pious acknowledgments and supplications should 
be confined ? Again, in our Saviour's subsequent 
history, and in that of his apostles, as the New Tes- 
tament preserves it, we find no traces of such settled 
and invariable formularies of supplication. At his 
Last Passover in the upper chamber ; and in tne gar- 
den, and on the cross ; he evidently bound not him- 
self to the employment of this or any other one form 



4 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

of supplication. As to the early Christians, we find 
one of the first of the Latin Fathers stating expli- 
citly, that the leader in the Christian assemblies was 
accustomed to pray according to his capacity. Each 
evangelist and pastor of those days, according to the 
measure of his personal endowments and graces, 
poured out before God the expression of their common 
wants for himself and the flock he led. And useful 
as it is, for certain purposes of private edification, to 
study the recorded prayers of such men as Bishops 
Andrewes and Ken, of the Puritan Baxter, or of the 
Nonconformists Matthew Henry, and Philip Doddridge, 
the regular use of another's form of words to express 
our personal needs, seems always to tend towards for- 
malism. The form lacks pliancy, and freshness, and 
adaptation. The practice seems again, in the multi- 
plication and imposition of such forms, to tend to that 
very evil of which Christ here warns us — the " vain 
repetitions" into which superstition, both within and 
without the pale of the Christian Church, seems so 
naturally to run. Had Christ, again, purposed to 
make this the liturgical law of all praying assemblies, 
would he not, in prospect of its use by the Christian 
Church, have added to it the plea that it should be 
heard in his the Mediator's Name? At a later day 
he taught his disciples that thereafter all their re- 
quests must be based on the one pleading of His 
merits, and on the single intercession of Himself as 
the effectual Advocate: " "Whatsoever ye shall ask 
the Father in my name he will give it you."* Now, 

* John xvi. 23. 



LECTURE I. O 

the Lord's Prayer lacking such clause of commenda- 
tion to the Father, by appeal fetched from the name 
and work of the Son, can scarce have been intended 
as the authoritative and enduring mould of prayer to 
the Church of Christ in all times. But, again, if 
Christ intended to make the prayers of his Church in 
all times a ritual and settled form, by what right have 
we any other forms of supplication than those of in- 
spired teachers? We receive religious ordinances 
from Christ's Scriptures and apostles only ; why take 
our liturgy, if this too were the proper and apostolic 
law of the Church, from authority later and lower 
than that of* apostolic times and apostolic men? Say 
you, it is good to pray with the Chrysostoms or 
Ambroses, the Gregorys and Bernards, the Fathers 
and confessors of primitive or mediaeval Christianity ? 
But is it not yet better to pray with the Spirit that 
animated them, and not them only, but who aided 
the confessors and saints worshipping in the Jewish 
temple, or offering unto Grod sacrifices and supplica- 
tions under the still earlier and patriarchal dispen- 
sation ? 

Christ, as we suppose, gave it rather as a specimen 
of prayer, such as He would have us habitually pre* 
sent, than as an imperishable mould into which all 
pious feeling and utterance must be compressed. It 
shows singular richness and comprehensive brevity. 
It puts into a striking light the relative worth of 
heavenly and earthly good, making our request even 
for the daily bread but one out of many petitions ; — 
not the first, as if the most momentous, — not the 



O THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

last, as ii the most urgent and longest remembered, 
but enclosed and enwrapped, as it were, in petitions 
that referred to spiritual things, to the growth* of 
God's kingdom, and the overthrow of Satan's tyranny. 
The order, again, in which its desires are ranged, 
teaches us that man's needs are never to take pre- 
cedency of God's rights. Its earlier petitions are still 
of the Maker and the Sovereign and the God ; — Thy 
name — Thy kingdom — and Thy will. Then, when 
these have been dwelt upon, come as in their train, 
man's wants and askings ; — our bread, our trespasses, 
and our temptations, and our deliverance. The Fall 
was an inversion of Heaven's order. It put the crea- 
ture first, and the Creator last. In this, as in the 
other teachings of Christ, the order of Truth and 
Nature, and God is restored ; man's insane decree for 
the dethronement of Jehovah is set aside, and the 
Greater takes rank of the lesser, and man's needs 
come in as the corollary of the restitution of God's 
rights. The heirs walk in the Father's train, and 
share in the conquests of the Avenger and Ransomer. 
At this time we ask you to consider but the open- 
ing invocation. It lifts upwards the child's brow, and 
claims in Heaven and in the King of that country a 
filial interest, ^fe may, to gather more clearly its 
blessed lessons, dwell upon the Parentage, " Our 
Father;" the brotherhood, " Our Father;" and the 
Home, " Our Father which art in Heaven :" or, in 
other words, the text may be regarded as grouping 
together the three principles which settle man's just 
relations to this and to the next world : 



LECTURE I. 7 

I. The Filial ; he sees in the Most High a Father : 

II. The fraternal ; he comes not with his private 
needs and vows alone, but with those of his race and 
brotherhood, " Our Father:" And 

III. The celestial ; Though we are now of the 
earth, and attached to it by these mortal and terrene 
bodies, we are not originally from it, nor were we 
made to be eternally upon it. We are of Heaven, 
and for Heaven ; for there and not here our Father 
is, and where He is our true Home is. 

I. In a certain sense, then, all men, the heathen 
and the sinner, no less than the regenerate disciple of 
the Saviour, may call God their Heavenly Parent. 
He is such, as their Creator. To him they owe the 
powers of body and mind which they possess ; and 
His fiat fixed the age in the world's history, as well 
as the country and the household in which they should 
be born. And again, in His daily and incessant care 
for them, as revealing itself in the revolving seasons, 
in the falling showers, and the springing harvests, — 
in the times of prosperity or calamity, enfranchise- 
ment or captivity, that pass over the nations, — His 
fatherly care and Providence are keeping ward over 
them, as does no mother over her cradled child, — as 
does no doting father over the Joseph or the Absalom 
who is the light of that father's eyes. He is thus 
" The Father of our spirits." The family and the 
tribe, must at last trace back their pedigree to the 
garden of Eden : and human life began in the plastic 
hand, that also moulded and shot along their heavenly 
orbits the starry worlds. Paul therefore quoted to the 



8 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

heathens of Athens the saying of one of their own 
Gentile poets: "¥e are his offspring." More really, 
than it can be said of our earthly progenitors, Grod is 
our Father. 

But we have not retained, undiluted and uncon- 
taminated, the original and divine stock. We are by 
our own fatal choice prodigals and exiles from the 
Father's home. Whilst even Paganism kept partial 
and fragmentary traces of the great truth that Grod is 
our Father, human depravity and Satanic delusion 
have done all in their power to efface the genealogy, 
and to renounce the heritage and to transfer to an- 
other, and that other an usurper, the filial allegiance. 
The Jews were told by Christ that they were of their 
father the Devil. The whole system of Revelation 
and Religion is an orderly scheme, manifesting itself 
in several stages or dispensations, for the bringing 
back of the wanderers and outcasts. And as in the 
early stages of the life of each of us, the child may 
look upon the father and his stern authority with 
something of distrust, and whilst remaining yet but 
a child — incapable of large views, and of being 
affected by long delayed promises or long deferred 
punishments, — needs prompt and tangible rewards 
and chastisements ; so, in the Jewish dispensation, — 
the childhood of the Church of Grod, — the blessings 
of obedience and the retributions of disobedience were 
more temporal and immediate in their character than 
now. And then, too, the Church looked on Grod, as it 
were, rather in the stern character of the Legislator 
and the Lord, than in the winning relation of the 



LECTURE I. if 

Parent. But as with the growth of years, a well- 
trained child is likely to extend to the father, as his 
own youthful faculties expand and he learns to under- 
stand the wisdom and necessity of the paternal re- 
straint — as he is, we say, likely, then, to extend to 
the father something of the confiding affection which 
he had heretofore kept only for the mother ; so, in the 
maturity of the Church, and in the later dispensation 
of God's own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, He, the 
God, who before had generally been seen but as the 
Lord, was now apprehended and approached as the 
Father. Dominion rises and softens into Fatherhood. 
But do all, having the Christian Scriptures, thus 
find themselves won by a filial love and trust towards 
God ? Alas, far from it. It is only the renewed soul, 
that can intelligently appropriate these privileges and 
come to the mercy-seat as to a Father's feet. We re- 
ceive by the grace of God in conversion, the spirit of 
adoption, " whereby we call God, abba, father." 
Whilst creation, then, attached us to God ; the Fall 
detached us from Him ; and it is only the Regenera- 
tion that re-attaches us. Whilst all are invited to 
come to God, even as children come to a loving parent, 
it is but too certain that none will heed the summons 
and embrace the privilege, except as the Spirit prompts 
and enables them. How impressive are the descrip- 
tions of some who have experienced that change — for 
instance, the poet Cowper, in his correspondence — of 
the new and strange gladness, — the spirit of filial trust 
wrought within them, when they obtained the confi- 
dence and the affection of children, in exchange fo* 
1* 



10 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the overmastering dread which they had once felt, 
dragging them as in bondage, and that a bondage as 
intolerable as it was indissoluble. 

But if Grod be a Father, where is his fear ? He re- 
quires it of those who are thus His children, that as 
such they not only confide in and claim Him ; but that 
they revere Him, fearing to dishonor and offend Him, 
and showing themselves careful of His name and will, 
with an ingenuous and filial awe ; and that they dis- 
play, also, submission when He afflicts them, or when 
He walks in mystery, and curtains His purposes and 
plans in thick darkness. All these traits of the filial 
relation, — how beautifully and perfectly were they ex- 
hibited in the demeanor of that Elder Brother who 
taught us this prayer. Need we examples of filial 
confidence? — See Him as he cries: "I know, Father, 
that thou nearest me always;" and on the cross, "Into 
thy hands, Father, I commend my spirit." Is it filial 
reverence? — Hear him at one time exclaim, "Even 
so. Father, for so has it seemed good in thy sight;" 
and at another time : "It is my meat and drink to 
do my Father's will ;" and still earlier : " Wist ye not 
that I must be about my Father's business ?" Is it 
filial submission ?— Stand by Him as he lifts to His 
shrinking lips the cup of atoning sorrow in Grethsem- 
ane, and exclaims amid outgushing blood and bitter 
sighs, " Not my will, Father, but thine be done." 
Christ's whole career furnished one lucid and cloud- 
less commentary on this opening invocation ; and He 
was indeed a Son in whom the Father was ever 
pleased ; and yet, though a Son, even He learned obe- 



LECTURE I. 11 

tlience by the things which he suffered. Is ours a 
World of sorrows ? Has Job's affliction its modern 
coincidences, and Lazarus' poverty ; — and have the 
bereavements of Moses, and Aaron, and Eli, and Da- 
vid, and Naomi, yet their parallels? Still, it is a 
Father's hand that bereaves and depresses us ; and 
prayer beside each freshly opened grave, and under 
each irreparable blow, is not only our plainest duty, 
but our richest privilege. And, in seasons of gladness, 
what new elements of sacred sweetness and celestial 
energy are added to our personal and social mercies, 
as we see in them the inscriptions, neither few nor 
illegible, of a Father's interest, even in our present 
and terrestrial career, and of His indulgent love, even 
for his yet imperfect and erring children. 

II. But, to find my Grod, must I not desert my kin- 
dred ; and breaking loose from the race in their banded 
revolt, must I not flee to the wilderness, and there 
rear for me, and tenant through life the hermitage ? 
Religion is indeed a personal thing, but it is not there- 
fore a principle of social isolation. We must visit the 
closet ; but into the closet we must carry the sympa- 
thies of the race, and bare before our Grod a heart that 
can take in the world, in its wide reach of interces- 
sion and fraternal regard. When the younger son, in 
the parable of the Prodigal, would turn his back on 
the father, he wished also to divide himself and his 
interests from the brother. " Grive me," said he, "the 
portion of goods that falleth to meP But when I 
come back to my forsaken and forgiving Father in 
Heaven, and ask him of His rich grace the goods to be 



12 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

given in the Brother's name to me, I must ask, not for 
myself only, but for all my brothers as well. The re- 
newal of the Parental, re-knits the fraternal tie. And 
hence the petitions of this prayer are throughout plural 
and collective. Though we go alone into the closet, 
we are not accepted there, if we go in selfishness and 
isolation, and if we come out thence egotists in our 
piety, and monopolists in our prayers. The patents of 
heavenly filiation are letters of world-wide fraternity. 
Hence the very birth-cry of Faith, in the first utter- 
ance of a newly witnessed adoption, claims God not 
only for itself, but for the entire household of faith. 

It was so in the Psalmist's times. He said indeed, 
"0 God, thou art my Grod." But he said also, "I 
was glad when they said unto me, come let us go into 
the house of God;" and Paul declares of early Chris- 
tians, that giving themselves to the Lord they gave 
themselves to the Church by the will of God ; and 
John puts down among the tests of true love to the 
Father, love to all who are begotten of Him. Is it, 
in these days of growing disregard for mere distinc- 
tions of class and rank, regarded as a noble utterance 
of the poet, when, scouting culture, and wealth, and 
title, he exclaims "A man's a man for a' that" — 
surely it is a principle older than his times — old as the 
cross and the day of Pentecost. Let a man, no 
matter what his sectarian distinctions, and natural or 
social disadvantages, — or what his discrepancies in the 
minor views and practices of religion, — give but evi- 
dence of love to Christ and to his word, and holiness, 
and he is my brother. Be he Arminian or Calvinist, 



LECTURE I. 13 

Episcopalian or Congregationalist, — let him be Bap- 
tist or Pedobaptist, — let him have all worldly disad- 
vantages of education, and station, and taste ; — be he 
Greek or Barbarian, bond or free,— if I love Christ, I 
love that disciple of Christ. u A sainfs a saint for 
a' that." Under every variety of costume, and dis- 
pensation, and dialect, and race, the tenant of a Caffre 
kraal, or of the Greenland er's snow-hut, — nay, let him 
mutter this prayer as his Pater Noster in an unknown 
tongue ; if I find under all his superstition and dis- 
guises of hereditary prejudice and error, the love of 
my Christ, and the likeness of my Lord, can I, — dare 
I disavow the brotherhood ? But, beyond those who 
are already Christians ; we suppose the principle of 
fraternity, here recognized, to include those yet igno- 
rant of the Saviour, who may become hereafter Chris- 
tians. And as we know not but that the worst and 
basest may be one day translated into this last class , 
see how broad a horizon the very outburst of the prayer 
opens. It bids us intercede for all men. Stephen's 
prayers took in Paul, whilst as yet that youth was the 
enemy of the martyr, and of the martyr's Lord, com- 
pelling men to blaspheme his Redeeming Name. And 
so should we pray, in the temper of our Saviour, when 
he flung from the cross the bands of His intercessory 
sympathy around the crowds, whose ears drank in 
with greedy hate the last gaspings of their murdered 
victim. 

Taken in this view, how far is the gospel yet in 
meek advance of the reforms and revolutions of our 
time. We throw no word of scorn in the path of 



14 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

those seeking honestly and wisely to uplift the down- 
trodden, and to right the oppressed. But in the dem- 
ocratic outbreaks of our times, how much is there of 
the hereditary hate of races. The Celt swears ven- 
geance against the Saxon ; the Sclavonic cannot fra- 
ternize with the German stock. The dim -epositories 
of the past are ransacked for missiles and watchwords, 
that may serve as firebrands to rekindle the old hered- 
itary feuds of alien and rival lineages. The Italian 
thinks himself scarce a creature of the same blood 
and of the same God with the Austrian. Now the 
gospel goes forth as the great, the peaceful, but unap- 
peasable revolutionist ; but its watchword is a frater- 
nity broad as Humanity. And when men learn to 
feel these ties and claims of brotherhood, the needy 
and the lowly are soothed and elevated ; the savage 
puts on dignity, and the bondsman hope ; and woman 
glides from the prison where barbarism had immured 
her. So, on the other hand, the mighty, and the intel- 
ligent, and the rich, thus instructed, forget their tran- 
sient and skin-deep distinctions of caste and culture ; 
and feel, — in the view of a common sin — and salva- 
tion—and judgment-seat, — the sense of stewardship 
casting out the odious spirit of self-gratification. Lit- 
eral equality, no change in man's power can bring 
about. There would remain, on the day after an equal 
distribution of all goods and lands to all earth's inhab- 
itants, the eternal and irremovable distinctions of sex 
and age, and mental talent and bodily endowment. 
You might as well propose to equalize the whole body 
of the man into an eye, clear but defenceless, or into a 



LECTURE I. 15 

cheek, earless, and eyeless, and browless, as to make 
the body politic, in all its members, and all its circum- 
stances, one. But give the feeling of true christian 
fraternity ; and, while each member retains its indi- 
viduality and its distinct offices, and its fitting pecu- 
liarities, the good of one member would become the 
good of all. The hand would toil in the light of the 
guiding eye ; and the eye travel in the strength of the 
adventurous and patient foot. No external legisla- 
tion, in the power of the Roman Empire, could have 
put John the Baptist utterly out of the reach of the 
long-cherished grudge in the heart of Herodias ; or 
have quenched in Nero's bosom his purpose of injury 
to the unoffending Christians of his dominion. But 
let the grace of Christ have gone into the heart of the 
Jewish princess, or the Gentile despot ; and the one 
would not have asked the massacre of her brother in 
Christ, John the Baptist ; and the other would not 
have heaped on his brethren, the millions of his sub- 
jects, wrong, and defilement, and confiscation, and 
death. The revolutions that stop short of the heart, 
leave the diseases of the body politic, and the miseries 
of the individual, of the household, and of the nation, 
unremedied. Brotherhood in Christ is the only true 
democracy of the soul. And, unleavened by this gos- 
pel of the Nazarene, Democracy can be as despotic, 
sanguinary, and faithless, as was the dominion of the 
Old Man of the Mountain, the Prince of the Assassins, 
in the days of the Crusaders. See, in proof of this, 
democracy as vaunting itself in the Canton de Vaud, 
persecuting the innocent Christians with fellest hate 



16 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

It is not the war of classes, or the war of castes and 
races, that must disenthral the earth ; but, in the 
spirit of the Lord's Prayer, and in the love of the Re- 
deemer who taught that prayer, — the nations must 
become brethren, to become free, and equal, and one. 
Now much of the effort of reform in our time is going 
in the wrong direction. It panders to the demoniacal 
part of man's nature, instead of seeking from God's 
word and Spirit the restoration of the divine principle 
in our fallen humanity. It gratifies, where it should 
regenerate. 

But how shall man get or keep this sense of his 
fraternity to man, and of his filial relations to Grod ? 
We must remember, then, in our own original and 
indestructible relations to the Universe, the principle 
celestial which our text brings out. Prayer is a pro- 
test against mere earthliness. It is asking — beyond 
Earth — what Earth cannot give ; it is an upward 
journey in quest of peace amid outward troubles, — of 
peace in the departing hour, — of victory over self and 
sin, and death. Whither does prayer go ? It is 
winged and ascending. We see in lower orders of 
the creation, a being the inhabitant of one element 
undergoing changes that prepare it to ascend into 
another. The worm puts on the wings of the butter- 
fly. The insect, in its early stage, a denizen of the 
waters, mounts, in its later stage, to the air. So is 
it with ourselves. We are in transition. Our views 
of man and earth are defective, — and ruinously de- 
fective, — if they do not regard the intimations to be 
found in our own spirits and in our earthly lot, of 



LECTURE I. 17 

our relation to another, an invisible and a heavenly 
world. 

III. " Our Father who art in Heaven" The 
Heaven where God is, is the point of man's original 
departure, and also the term of man's final destiny. 
Earth is but an outlying colony and dependency of 
the Empire of Heaven, — the serene, the all-controlling 
and everlasting Heaven. Man was not his own 
maker, nor is he properly his own legislator. True 
views of Virtue and Duty, and Government, and 
Happiness, cannot be formed on earth if you exclude 
Heaven from the field of vision. Now, it is the cry 
of some socialists and revolutionists in our times, that 
man has been cheated of earth by visions of an im- 
aginary Heaven beyond it, and that this world may 
be and ought to be made our Heaven, and that it will 
suffice as our only Paradise. A proposal to make 
their own daylight, and to arrange for themselves the 
axis, and the poles, and the orbit of the earth, by vote 
of a great ecumenical legislature, would be as sobei 
and as practicable a theory. You could not, if you 
would, cut loose your globe and your race from heaven. 
It is an impossibility by the will of the earth's Framer 
and Sovereign. You should not, if you could, thus 
disunite them. It would be wretchedness. Heaven 
is necessary to earth even in the things of this life, 
to drop its balm into the beggar's cup, and to shed its 
light on the child's lesson. You cannot sail over that 
comparatively narrow strip of your planet, the sea 
that parts your coast from the white cliffs of Albion, 
without calling the Heaven and its orbs in their far 



18 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

wider range of space into view, in order thereby to 
aid your calculations and to supply your nautical 
reckonings. You cannot time your morrow's visit to 
your office, but as God shall keep his sun and your 
own earth, (or his earth, rather,) — as they roll and 
blaze, millions of miles away from each other, — in 
their present relative positions to each other. And 
so, without the moral influence of the Heavens upon 
the earth, you cannot be blest, or just or free, or true. 
Your philosophies become, — with Grod forgotten and 
defied, with Eternity and accountability obliterated 
from their teachings — but a lie ; and your political 
economy shorn of Duty and Grod, is left but a lie ; 
and your statesmanship, and your civilization, and 
your enfranchisement, if torn loose from Conscience 
and the Lord of conscience, all are left but one vast 
and ruinous delusion. 

Man's Maker is in Heaven. He formed His crea- 
ture for His own service and His own glory. That 
creature has revolted ; and until his return to the 
Grod in Heaven from whom he is departed, the anger 
of Heaven is on the race and its institutions ; and 
even its mercies are cursed. The shadow of the 
Throne must be projected over the board where man 
daily feeds, — over the cradle and the school, and the 
ballot-box, — over the shop and the rail-road, and the 
swift ship, the anvil and the plough and the loom, — 
over all that ministers to man's earthly comforts and 
corporeal needs ; — as well as over the pillow where he 
lays down his throbbing head to die, and over the 
grave where he has left his child, his wife* or his 



LECTURE I. 19 

friend, to moulder. Not that we ask an establish- 
ment of Christianity as a State Religion. But we 
mean, that, for man's own interest his daily mercies 
and tasks must, in Paul's language, " be sanctified 
by the word of (rod and prayer ;" — by a remem- 
brance of the Deity whose subject he irrevocably is, 
and a continual preparation for the eternity of which 
he is indefeasibly the heir. 

Heaven was, we said, not only man's point of de- 
parture, but it is also the term of his final destiny. 
We do not mean that all men will reach Heaven to 
inherit it. But all must stand before its bar to be 
judged. They cannot strip from themselves mor- 
tality or immortality, and the moral accountability 
which, after death, awaits the deathless and disem- 
bodied spirit. This world is but a scene of probation. 
Christ has descended to show how this world may be- 
come the preparation for a celestial home. Bring 
Heaven, as Christ's blood opens it and Christ's word 
paints it, before the wretched and wicked denizens of 
earth : and what power does that eternal world, seen 
by the eye of Faith, possess to attract and to elevate, 
— to extricate from the quagmires of temptation, — to 
assimilate and ennoble the degraded into its own glo- 
rious likeness ; — and to compensate the suffering and 
the needy, and the neglected of earth, for all which 
they have lost and for all they have endured. 

And until men consent to make Heaven, as it were, 
the background of all their earthly vista, their views — - 
in history, and in art, and in science, and in law, and 
in freedom — must all be partial and fallacious. Eliz- 



20 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

abeth of England, in ignorance of the laws of paint- 
ing, wished her own portrait to be taken by the painter 
without shadows. She knew not that in the painter's 
art there could not be light and prominence to any 
figure or feature, unless as it had some measure of 
shade behind it. Alas, how many would have man 
portrayed, in their schemes of polity and of philoso- 
phy; without the dark background of Death and Eter- 
nity behind him, and without the shadings of Fear, 
and dim Hope, and dark Conscience within him. But 
it cannot be. 

Fit the man for Heaven, and train him for eternity ; 
and he cannot be utterly unfit for Earth while he 
stays there. Fit him for Earth only ; secularize his 
education, and refuse to acknowledge his relations and 
obligations to Heaven ; and he is no longer truly and 
fully fit for earth. Our globe, without the sun or the 
stars, or the light of the material Heavens, — what 
were it as a place of man's habitation ? — Read a noble 
and infidel bard's gloomy poem on Darkness, and you 
may conceive the fate of a race blinded, and chilled, 
and groping their way into one frozen charnel-house. 
And so our earth, — without the light of Christ the 
Former of it, and Christ on the cross as the Redeemer 
of it, and Christ on the throne as the Judge of it, — 
the world without Him as its Sun of Righteousness, 
is morally eclipsed, and blasted with the winter of the 
Second Death ; and that frost and gloom kill not only 
its religion, but kill its freedom as well, and its peace, 
and its civilization, and its science. 

Let the world know that there is a Father, and they 



LECTURE I. 21 

will bethink them of His Providence ; — let them know 
that He is our common Father, and they will learn 
charity and philanthropy for the race ; — let them know 
that He is in Heaven, and they will be awed and 
guided by that Immortality and Accountability which 
link them to that world of light. 

Let the churches ponder these great truths. In the 
filial principle of our text, they will find Life and 
Earth made glorious, by the thought that a Father 
made and rules them ; and, above all worldly dis- 
tinctions, they will prize and exult in their bonds 
through Christ to Him ; — rejoicing, mainly as Christ 
commanded his apostles to rejoice, in this that their 
names are written in Heaven. In the fraternal prin- 
ciple we shall aright learn to love the Church and to 
compassionate the world ; and in the principle celes- 
tial, we shall be taught to cultivate that heavenly- 
mindedness which shall make the Christian, though 
feeble, suffering, and forlorn in his worldly relations, 
already lustrous and blest, as Burke described in her 
worldly pomp, and in the bloom of her youth, the hap- 
less Queen of France : " A brilliant orb, that seemed 
scarce to touch the horizon." More justly might the 
saint of (rod be thus described ; having already, as the 
apostle enjoins, his conversation in Heaven, and shed- 
ding around the earth the splendors of that world with 
which he holds close and blest communion, and to- 
wards which he seems habitually ready to mount, 
longing to depart that he may be with Christ, which 
is far better. 



"Sflllomrit to tjjtf jgjjBf." 



LECTURE II. 

" iitallirattit to tljij $sm" 

Matthew, vi. 9. 

The opening words of the prayer raise our thoughts 
to Heaven — our Father's abode and our proper Home. 
It is the central seat and the Metropolis of Holiness. 
Its very atmosphere is one of moral purity. Its in- 
habitants, although various in rank and endowment, — 
some of them angels unconscious of a Fall, and others 
of them children of Adam, ransomed from a fall most 
profound and deplorable, — are all, however otherwise 
distinguished from each other, now alike in this one 
trait, that they are all and altogether, holy. Sinless 
themselves, they offer sinless praises to the Sinless 
One, and hymn together the name of Ineffable Sanc- 
tity. 

Raised by the opening words of the Lord's Prayer, 
as the soul is, to the verge of this land of celestial pu- 
rily, the words which next follow that opening clause, 
and which form our text, are a prayer in which the 
soul inhales seemingly from Paradise its atmosphere 
of holiness, and takes up for Earth the burden and re- 

2 



26 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

sponse of Heaven's eternal anthem, " Hallowed be thy 
Name." To hallow is to treat as holy ; or purely to wor- 
ship and purely to serve. But fettered as in our dark 
world we are with all unholiness, does notour innate and 
universal depravity make the prayer a contradiction ? Is 
not the mere passage through our unclean lips of that 
name of such tremendous purity, a contamination of its 
spotlessness ? Can the Sinless brook even the vows, im- 
perfect and defiled, of the sinful ? Do we not dese- 
crate and dishallow, so to speak, this the theme of 
Heaven, by our attempts to stammer it ? Like the 
white lily cropt by the collier's begrimed hand, — a 
flower soiled in the very gathering of it, — does not our 
moral unfitness profane, as we pronounce it, a Name 
so august and holy ? As by the contrast between our 
work and ourselves, and in the flagrant opposition be- 
tween the theme and the worshipper, we are humbled, 
The opening of the Lord's Prayer, like the opening of 
the Beatitudes, preaches penitence and humility. Do 
the Beatitudes, before all things else, require us to be 
poor in spirit ; so also does this petition of our Lord's 
Prayer. A. prayer for holiness in (rod's service, is vir- 
tually a protest against our own prevalent unholiness, 
by nature, and by practice as well. "With earnest sup- 
plication, then, for that preparation which in ourselves 
we find not, let us now — 

I. Examine the terms of the prayer ; 

II. Consider the sins of act and thought this peti- 
tion condemns in us ; and, 

III. The duties to which it pledges us. 

I. To implore that God's name may be hallowed is 



LECTURE II. 27 

to ask that it may be treated with due reference, as 
befits the holy. In Heaven it is so treated. When 
Isaiah saw in Grod's own temple a vision of the Heav- 
enly Throne, and its ministering angels, these attend- 
ant spirits responded to each other in sacred rapture : 
" Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole 
earth is full of His glory." # From all pure and sinless 
worlds comes back a repetition of the strain. But 
from our earth the echo was broken off by the Fall. 
We have in the apostle's language, sinned, " and come 
short of His glory. ,"t We start aside from that great 
end and aim of our being — the Divine glory — for 
which we were created. Whatever else of wisdom^ 
and strength the Fall left, yet in some degree remain- 
ing in and adhering to our nature, holiness was the 
element of human character that was most fatally and 
entirely destroyed. Ourselves, thus become both un- 
willing and unfit to praise Him, we sought to ad- 
vance Man's name to the priority and authority from 
which we would fain thrust aside Grod's. The Fall 
was an attempt to dethrone the Creator and Sovereign, 
by the enthronization and the apotheosis of self, 

But true holiness we had lost irremediably in the 
attempt thus to wrong our Father, and to deify our- 
selves. For holiness is entire purity, — the absence of 
all sin. And our rivalry of (rod was itself the very 
sum of sin. Now, if one attribute of the Most High 
could be especially dear to his nature, it would seem 
to be His holiness. To Israel, Jehovah proclaimed 
himself as " the Holy One of Israel ;" and in the ap- 

* Isaiah vi. 8. \ Romans iii 23. 



28 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

pellation selected to honor the Third Person in the 
adorable Trinity, the Divine Spirit is called not the 
Mighty, not the Wise, not the High, not the Gracious, 
— but the Holy Spirit. So m the Atonement, the 
crowning manifestation of the Divine perfections, the 
scheme was intended especially to advance the claims 
of Holiness. Of Holiness, Justice or Righteousness 
is an indispensable and a prominent element. The 
Cross of Christ was intended to show God just in 
making man again just ; to vindicate the Holiness as 
well as to commend the Mercy of Heaven ; to remove 
the unholiness of man, and to fit him by the redemp- 
tion and regeneration for the stainless purity of the 
world above, which he had forfeited. And this at- 
tribute of the Divine Nature, it is also, that most 
alarms man. "We shrink from death because we then 
instinctively expect to be brought nearer to God ; and 
in the sense of our moral dissimilitude we tremble to 
bring our own sinfulness before His eyes, too pure to 
look upon iniquity. Upon Holiness, then, God lays the 
most earnest stress in the title He assumes, and in 
the atonement He devises ; and upon holiness man 
may well ponder, since the Fall lost it ; and on the 
approach of death it is his loss of this which over- 
casts the eternal world, and makes the expected vision 
of God one of terror and vengeance ; " a fearful look- 
ing for of judgment and fiery indignation that shall 
devour the adversaries." 

But what is God's Name ? Amongst mankind, the 
name is that by which we distinguish and more or 
less perfectly describe each other. It is a man's 



LECTURE II. 29 

known title, or appellation. At times giving to it a 
larger sense, we mean by it all a man's character as 
displayed before , his fellows ; and we speak of one 
whose reputation is widely known and highly ad- 
mired, as having won " a great name." In this latter 
and larger application of it, the term then means some- 
thing more than the man's family appellative, or the 
description of his personal appearance, or of any of 
his isolated acts ; it comprises his entire character as 
a moral agent, — all that his fellow-creatures say of 
him. And men may thus be well known to us by 
name, of whom we have no personal knowledge. The 
votes of a large portion of our people were cast in the 
election that has just gone by # for individuals whom 
they had not seen, but whom they knew by their 
character or general " name." It was a suffrage 
given to names rather than to personal associates and 
neighbors, (rod, as a Spirit, properly invisible and 
dwelling in light inaccessible, is separated from our 
bodily senses ; and can to us be known, only by this 
His general character, or Name. And in this larger 
sense, the term before us is used in Scripture to de- 
scribe all those signs and deeds by which God makes 
known to us His moral essence ; — all the manifesta- 
tions which He has given of His nature and purposes ; 
— as well as in the narrower sense of the titles and 
appellations which He has chosen to proclaim as His 
own. As His Scripture, or His word, is a fuller and 
clearer manifestation of His character than is con- 
tained in this material structure — the handiwork of Orod 
* This sermon was delivered in November, 1S-18. 



30 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

— the visible Creation; — so, consequently, this volume 
of Divine Scripture and the Revelation there made are 
an important part of His Name. As the Son, in his in- 
carnation, yet more clearly and yet more nearly mani- 
fested Grod, he, the embodying Messiah, is called the 
Word of Grod. For as the word or speech is the em- 
bodiment of human thought ; so his humanity was 
the embodiment of the Divine Thought, or rather, of 
the Divine Spirit. Moses had, when sheltered in the 
cleft of the rock, heard the Name proclaimed. Elijah 
caught its " still, small voice." But Christ was the 
distinct, full, and loud utterance of the Name — articu- 
late, legible, and tangible, — complete and enduring. 
And all the institutions which Christ himself estab- 
lished, or which his apostles after him ordained by 
his authority, since those institutions bear His Name, 
or illustrate His character, are to be regarded as 
coming within the scope of the text. The Sabbath, 
— the Bible, — the Sanctuary or place of worship, — the 
Church, or the worshippers there, — the ministry, — 
and each Christian convert — are found, then, to be 
embraced within the range and dread shadow of this 
great and dreadful Name. Far as Grod is seen in 
these, and shown by them ; — His character, so illus- 
trated and made manifest in them — is to be treated 
with lowliest reverence, as being awfully sacred and 
infinitely holy. We do not plead in the interest and 
behalf of man, for any sacred and inviolable caste ; 
we only assert, for the honor of Grod, that what man 
does at His command, and to His glory, should be 
treated with reverence, just as the acts of an embas- 



LECTURE II. 31 

sador, duly commissioned, may not be dissevered from 
the rights and majesty of the Sovereign in whose name 
he speaks. 

As Grod is Himself a bodiless Spirit, it is especially 
the condition of our spirits towards Him that He 
regards. Mortal kings accept bodily service, and the 
allegiance of the lips and the knee, and the stately cer- 
emonial, because they can go no deeper and see no 
further. But Grod's glance goes to the inner and in- 
visible reality of the man, and asks him, as the subject 
and worshipper. The state of our sentiments and af- 
fections, as regarding Him, He most intently and con- 
stantly eyes. Duly to hallow His Name, requires then 
not only a reverence consisting in outward and visible 
tokens, — a worship of the lip and the knee,— but much 
more the homage and devotion of the inmost soul. The 
unrenewed heart cannot really hallow the name of Je- 
hovah. And as the spirit of adoption was needed, to 
cry, in the true sense of the word, " Abba, Father ;" 
so the Spirit of Holiness is requisite to make us compe- 
tent worshippers of Grod's holy Name. But, as was in- 
timated, our text painfully impeaches, as by implica- 
tion, our own moral fitness to appear in the outer 
circle of Grod's worshippers. The light of Heaven 
seems to repel the approach in us of Chaos and old 
Night. How can those, who themselves are but the 
unhallowed and profane, hallow what is their Maker's ? 
Is it not an Uzzah's forbidden hand on the ark, and an 
Uzziah's lawless grasp of the censer ? And how fre- 
quently and habitually is this unhappy dissonance be- 
tween us and the present petition brought out, by the 



32 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

close scrutiny of our way and the devout and earnest 
study of our hearts. 

II. Let us, then, consider the sins of act and of 
thought, which this petition condemns in us. 

1. The profanity then which trifles with God's 
Name and Titles, is evidently most irreligious ; and it 
is, though so rife a sin, most unnatural, however 
easily and however often it be committed. Other 
sins may plead the gratification of some strong incli- 
nation, — the promise of enjoyment or of profit, which 
they bring with them, and the storm of emotion sweep- 
ing the tempted into them. But what of gain or of 
pleasure may be hoped from the thoughtless and irrev- 
erent, — the trivial or the defiant use of that dread 
Name, which angels utter with adoring awe? That 
the sin is so unprovoked adds to its enormity. That 
it is so common, fearfully illustrates the wide remo- 
val which sin has made of man's sympathies from the 
Grod to whom he owes all good ; — rendering him for- 
getful alike of his obligations for past kindnesses, and 
of his exposure to the coming judgment. How mur- 
derously do men guard the honor of their own paltry 
names, and how keenly would they resent, on the part 
of a fellow-sinner, though their equal, the heartlessness 
that should continually, in his narratives, and jests, 
and falsehoods, call into use the honor of a buried 
father, and the purity of a revered and departed 
mother, and employ them as the expletive or emphatic 
portions of his speech— the tacks to bestua and emboss 
his frivolous talk. And is the memory of an earthly, 
and inferior, and erring parent deserving of more re- 



LECTURE II. 3^ 

gard than that of the Father in Heaven, the All-hdy, 
and the Almighty, and the All-gracious ? And if pro- 
fanity be evil, what is perjury, but a daring endeavor 
to make the God of Truth and Justice an accomplice 
in deception and robbery ? The vain repetitions of 
superstitious and formal prayer ; — the acted devotions 
of the theatre, when the dramatist sets up worship on 
the stage as a portion of the entertainment ; — and the 
profane intermixture in some christian poets of the 
gods of Heathenism with the true Maker and Ruler 
of Heaven, re-installing, as poets both Protestant and 
Catholic have done, the Joves and Apollos, the Mi- 
nervas and Yenuses of a guilty Mythology, in the ex- 
istence and honor, of which Christianity had stript 
them, — will not be past over, as venial lapses, in the 
day when the Majesty of Heaven shall make inquisi- 
tion of guilt and requisition for vengeance. 

And so, as to those institutions, upon which Jeho- 
vah has put His name, just as an earthly monarch 
sets his seal and broad arrow on edict and property, — 
the putting to profane and common uses what God 
has claimed for sacred purposes, betrays an evident 
failure to hallow His Name. The employment of the 
day of hallowed rest, in riot and sloth, — or in the sale, 
or the purchase, or the perusal of the Sabbath news- 
paper ;— the Sabbath jaunt, disquieting and defiling 
the rural peace of the regions around by the eruption 
of the follies and vices of the city, weekly disgorging 
itself along the highway and the railroad, and the 
water-course ; — and all the conversation and employ 
rnents inconsistent with the sanctity of the day of sa* 



34 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

cred worship and repose — these infringe on the rights 
and honors of God's name. So irreverence, or form- 
alism ; — a vain display in the House of God, and a su- 
perstitious or a hypocritical employment of the sanc- 
tuary, all these too trench upon the glory of the Divine 
Name. And in the church, more properly so called,— 
the body of living worshippers, — God's name may be 
desecrated when too much is claimed for the organiza- 
tion ; as when the church is put instead of Christ as 
though it were in itself the way of salvation, or when 
the church is set instead of the Scriptures, as though 
its councils and doctors were the Standard of Truth, 
or when the church is exalted instead of the Holy 
Ghost, as though its ministrations and sacraments 
were the Givers of religious life. And His Name may 
be profaned, on the other hand, when too little regard 
is shown to his church, as when christian profession is 
held needless, or when membership is made worldly, 
or when the synagogue of Satan is made to hold fel- 
lowship with the temple of the Lord. This last seems 
as flagrant a misdemeanor, as it would have been, had 
Solomon from the mount of Offence and Corruption, 
where he worshipped the gods of Paganism, flung 
a bridge across the intervening chasm, to bind the 
hill and shrine of abominations with the Mount 
Moriah, the site of God's own chosen temple, and of 
rites and victims that prefigured the World's One Ran- 
som. "What fellowship, asks an apostle, has Christ 
with Belial ? And in the christian ministry, is it not 
a taking of God's name in vain, when the office is 
either unduly extolled, as if it were a sacrificial priest- 



LECTURE II. 35 

hood : — or unduly depreciated, as though its incum- 
bent were but an ecclesiastical hireling, — or when the 
sacred work is thoughtlessly assumed, as a mere pro- 
fession, or for slight cause relinquished ? And so of 
the Bible, God's book;— true regard for its Author 
will dictate a reverent use of the volume itself, as when 
the young Edward the Sixth of England uplifted and 
kissed the Bible, which some of his thoughtless attend- 
ants had used as a step to reach some higher object, 
And still more will true piety demand a religious re- 
gard for the contents of the book. We shall not set 
our own carnal reason above that Bible's statements : 
nor consult it without prayerful conference with that 
Spirit of whom it testifies, and for whose influence it 
bids us implore. We shall not wrest, or parody, or 
lightly quote its infallible words. When the canonized 
Bonaventure, a cardinal of the Romish church, took a 
portion of that Scripture, the Book of Psalms, and con- 
verted it into a Litany for the Yirgin Mary, by sub- 
stituting throughout her name in the Psalms for Grod's, 
was not the Lord's Prayer protesting, as by anticipa- 
tion, against this rude extrusion of the one Divine 
Name ? — this conversion of the Psalms into a moral 
Palimpsest, where the Creator's name was expunged 
to receive the creature's ? And could such a ritual as 
that which the Romish saint had thus provided, reach 
Heaven ; would not Christ's meek mother turn away, 
in Paradise, with a holy indignation from the odors of 
that rank idolatry, which flung around the footstool 
occupied by her, incense embezzled and robbed from 
her Son's censer and treasury, and throne of supremest 



36 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

dominion ? Would she not disown such treason 
against Him, who was, at once, her Maker, her Re- 
deemer, and her child? Even, when busied in the 
defence of scriptural truth, there may be a violence 
of temper and language unbecoming and irreverent to 
God's holy Name. With all the wit and wisdom of 
South's sermons, it must be confessed that Doddridge 
spoke not causelessly, when he said of them that 
South seemed to assert even Truth itself with the 
mocking and envenomed spirit of a fiend. Holy truths 
have been, even by churchmen, wolfishly debated and 
rabidly defended. 

2. But from the sins in act, which this prayer de- 
nounces, let us pass to the sins more secret, but if 
possible yet more deadly, those of thought, — the errors 
and idolatries of the heart. Jehovah's chosen and 
most august domain is that where human legislators 
cannot enter or even look — the hidden world of man's 
soul. And in the speculations, and in the mute and 
veiled affections of that inner sphere, how much may 
Grod be profaned and provoked. 

If, for instance, instead of " the beauty of holiness," 
which His Word and Nature alike require, we hope 
to conciliate and content Him by the mere beauty of 
Art, — the stately edifice, — the wonders of the pencil 
and the chisel, — the lofty dome and the tuneful choir, 
— and the elaborate. spectacle, — and the gorgeous rit- 
ual, — is He not dishonored by such oblivion of the 
true spirit of His religion? 

And if, with the Rationalist on the one hand, in our 
views of the Divine character, we contrive to obscure 



LECTURE II. 37 

from our theological system the Divine Holiness, and 
exaggerate the Divine Mercy at the expense of the 
Divine Purity,— if we proclaim that the Incarnation 
and Redemption were needless, and are but excres- 
cences on a system of hope and salvation for sinners ; 
—Or if, on the other hand, with the anti 'christian 
churches of Rome and the East, we crowd the Mercy- 
seat with many and inferior occupants, and virtually 
rend from the Saviour the ephod of priestly interces- 
sion which He only is competent to wear, and lend 
the vesture, stript from Him, to the mediators many 
of our saints' calendar, with every new canonization 
adding a fresh lodger to the house of our idols, and 
drawing a fresh veil over the cross of the one Atone- 
ment ; — by either of these opposite errors we profane 
the Name of (rod, that one Saviour, Crucified yet 
Divine, beside whom there is none else. 

Or if, in our Science , we veil the personal and re- 
vealed Jehovah of the Scriptures under the dim and 
vague and impersonal imagery of " Nature," and the 
" Powers of Nature," and the " Laws of Nature," 
and put as far as possible out of view all marks of 
special design or special intervention in the existing 
frame of things ; and if, whilst we allow of a Creator 
and a Sovereign, we strive to present Him as having 
given up His share in the machinery of the Universe 
long since, and as scorning to soil his august hands 
with the pettinesses of our animalcule globe ; — He 
who sits in the heavens and regards what is done on 
the earth, will not hold guiltless our endeavor thus 
made, virtually to efface the Maker's stamp and super- 



38 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

scription from his own handiwork, and our effort, as 
fruitless as it is audacious, to wrench the Sovereign's 
signature and seal from His own edicts and procla- 
mations. And from Natural Science to pass to Na- 
tional History, if, in the annals of the nations, we 
resolve all into the casual play of secondary causes, 
and leave Providence no helm to grasp, and the stu- 
dent of history no chart and star to eye, then, too, we 
sin against God's Name : for we believe that it is be- 
ginning to be generally felt, that God must be remem- 
bered to bring continuity and unison into the tangled 
skein of human affairs ; and the prophecies of Scrip- 
ture are found after all to furnish the only symmetri- 
cal frame-work, and skeleton, and scaffolding of the 
Universal History of the race. 

And wretchedly must he be considered as offending 
against the spirit of this prayer, who in his Panthe- 
istic philosophy would confound man the sinner and 
Abaddon the Tempter, with the Lord God the Creator, 
the Redeemer, and the Judge of the race ; in whose 
Pandemoniac alembic all religions and all existences 
are found to coagulate into one Being, — and that 
Being is at one and the same time, self, and the 
universe, and God. Milton made Satan daringly 
blaspheme when he said, "Evil, be thou my good;" 
but Pantheism vaults yet higher in its atrocious 
temerity, when it virtually exclaims, " Evil and Good 
are one ; — Apollyon is but an incarnation of Jehovah ; 
—and Sin an effluence of Holiness, or Heaven seen 
in a side-light." In the image described by the Chal- 
dean king, the Statue fell, for its feet were of kneaded 



LECTURE II. 39 

iron and clay. But this view of Pantheistic wisdom 
would make not the feet of the Universe^but its very 
kead, a strange intermixture of gold and mire, gather- 
ing into one compound Deity, Sin, and Salvation, evil 
and good, truth and falsehood, Heaven and Hell, man 
and fiend, and Grod ; and virtually teaching man, as 
the Narcissus of all existence, in the wide mirror of 
the Universe, to behold and adore but one Grod, and 
that Grod the reflection of his own petty, frail, and 
sinful Self, 

Much of the Catholicism and Liberalism of our 
times is, when analyzed, found running into this chan- 
nel. It proposes to reconcile all religions by going 
back of peculiarities in Revelation, and giving up 
the Pentateuch and the gospels, to procure the relin- 
quishment by Mahometans and Pagans of the Koran, 
and the Zenda vesta and the Shasters. As if, in our 
Revolution, a peacemaker had appeared to counsel 
union and reconciliation with England, by abjuring 
and suppressing the Continental Congress, and its 
captain and champion, Washington, and the Declara- 
tion of Independence it had issued. It is giving up 
Truth to conciliate Error; and appeasing Wrong by 
the sacrifice of Right. The peace so clumsily made, 
in our Revolutionary struggle, would have been based 
on injustice, and would have issued in bondage, And 
the theological or philosophical truce, that is to be 
patched up by the surrender of Christianity, is the 
old fable revived, of a peace made between the sheep 
and the wolves by the sacrifice of the Shepherd, whose 
vigilance alone had saved the first from the fangs of 



40 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the last. As to the gain, what is the race benefited 
by stripping, them of religion, and robbing them of 
Heaven and conscience and Christ, — and by deifying 
man, and by uncrowning and undeifying the God that 
made and governs man ? Man remains, spite of your 
philosophy, — the sufferer, — the sinner, — and the mor- 
tal still ; — needing a consolation and sustentation, 
which neither self nor the universe, apart from God 
can ever supply. And the Lord who made man, — as 
He has not borrowed leave of your philosophy to come 
into existence,— is not likely to abdicate His throne 
or terminate His eternity at the summons of your 
arrogant Liberalism. And what, then, are you the 
better, if the Chancery of Heaven disown your bold 
treaty ? 

In men's hearts, then, and in men's lives, there is 
much which this prayer condemns. All derogatory 
views of God's nature, and all derogatory treatment 
of His titles and institutions, come within the same 
category that dooms, though in varied grades of guilt 
and of woe, the blasphemer and the perjurer. Let us 
now, 

III. Consider the duties to which this prayer, for a 
hallowing of our Father's name, pledges us. As, in 
order to hallow God's name, we must ourselves be- 
come holy, Repentance and Regeneration are evidently 
required to acceptable service before the Lord our God. 
Are Christians called vessels of the house of God ? It 
is needful that they be purified " to become vessels 
meet for the Master's use." The vase must be cleansed 
for the manna. Are they to shine, in steady liquH 



LECTURE II. 41 

lustre, as lights in the world ? The windows, through 
which the unquenched testimony beams out upon the 
stormy seas, — and the r lirrors in which these beams 
are gathered and concentrated, — must not be begrimed 
with sin or painted over by heresy. Are they temples 
of the Holy Grhost ? Body and soul must bear memo- 
rials of the consecration. "Be ye holy, for I am 
holy," was the injunction of the Old Testament. " Be 
ye holy in all manner of conversation," is in like man- 
ner the precept of the New Dispensation. " Reverence 
thyself," was the proud motto of the Pagan sage ; but 
Christianity more wisely and safely bids us, in our 
sinful self, to seek the enthronement, and to reverence 
the image of God in Christ, that Christ who is, at 
once, the Reconciled and the Reconciling G-od, — Jus- 
tice propitiated to man, and Mercy winning man back 
to Grod. Are Christians the living epistles of Christ ? 
They are to see to it, that they do not falsify the sig- 
nature or dishonor the Name of Grod, by becoming ob- 
literated and mouldering monuments, or inscriptions, 
interpolated and forged, and undecipherable in the 
record they bear. 

2. And, as a consequence of this growing holiness, 
Christians must grow in lowliness and self -abasement. 
Much of the misery which our vanity undergoes, and 
much of the bitter controversy that has rent and de- 
graded the churches, has grown out of a failure in 
this respect — an oblivion of this prayer. In the dispo- 
sition to advance himself in the esteem of his fellow- 
disciples, a good man may virtually say in his speech, 
ere he is aware : " Let my name be canonized," when 



42 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

he should be striving to have Christ's name sanctified, 
And so, even whilst not thus erring as to ourselves, 
we may err, in the like spirit of self- exaltation, as tc 
our spiritual leaders, our religious parties and parti- 
zans, and our chosen models of christian perfection, 
and our human standards of christian truth. The 
second and declining stage in the history of every 
great religious reformation, has been thus marked. 
In the first and purer age, the true-hearted leaders 
forget self, and think of the truth only, and of the 
Master, and of the due vindication and honor of these. 
But in the next generation, the leaders of the genera- 
tion past have become demigods, and must have their 
funeral monuments erected as having become morally, 
to their disciples, the new Pillars of Hercules beyond 
which Truth may not travel, nor Research dare to 
pass with her adventurous foot. Luther, ere his death, 
saw the growth and guilt of this spirit, and denounced 
those who would make the reform his, as if it were 
his property and act rather than Christ's. Robinson, 
of Leyden, when bidding the Puritan fathers farewell, 
as they were already turning their faces to the forests 
of this "Western world, warned them against the error 
that had made the Lutheran refuse to go beyond Lu- 
ther, and the Calvinist beyond Calvin. We, of this 
land where New England has borne so large and glo- 
rious a share in leavening the national character, are 
probably in some danger of idolatrous homage to the 
names of the Puritan Fathers. It is so easy and so 
common an infirmity, to let the priest glide from the 
altar where he only serves, into the very shrine, where 



LECTURE II. 43 

he may fill the throne, — to make the spiritual guide 
virtually the spiritual god, and to treat those by whom 
we have believed in Christ as if they were those in 
whom we have believed ; and we thus extol, and 
guard, and hallow their names instead of (rod's. And 
yet whatever of talent, or virtue, or prowess man may 
display, how bedwarfed and defective are the greatest 
of mere men when tried by the stern standard of holi- 
ness. " The Hero-worship," of which a strong think- 
er* of our times speaks so much, is found in all creeds 
and communions ; and yet what are the world's he- 
roes, or the church's heroes, if Holiness, entire and 
blameless, be the requisite of moral grandeur ; being 
the essence of celestial heroism, as it assuredly is ? 
Alexander the drunkard, — Caesar the debauched, — 
Napoleon the sanguinary and rapacious ; — how shrink 
they all, and wither, and shrivel, as the measuring- 
rod of (rod's temple is laid upon their factitious great- 
ness. And, even in the worthies of the church, from 
Abraham to David, and from David to Peter, and from 
Apostles to Reformers, and from Reformers to Chris- 
tians of our own times, how evident is the incompe- 
tency of any one and of all, to brook the trial of that 
broad law of Holiness. The w T orld is gone astray in 
its idea of greatness. It needs to know better, and to 
vame more the only true majesty, that of holiness, or 
moral excellence. We rear the costly monument, 
and " build the lofty rhyme" to heroes, and fail to see 
that Grod the Holy, is the centre and standard of great- 
ness ; and that until, in lowliness, and contrition, and 
* Carlyle. 



44 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

self-consecration, we turn to him, we may be flattered, 
and feared, and hated, and served of man ; but hon- 
ored of (rod and really great we cannot be. Upon 
this ascent of man to true greatness by regeneration, 
how little do even Christians think. We know of but 
one Epic in the language of Christian Britain that turns 
upon its hero's conversion ; it is Southey's Roderick 
the Goth. 

3. Pledged thus to holiness, and to lowliness as a 
consequence of understanding the true nature and the 
wide compass of holiness, Christians are again, in cry- 
ing to their Father for the sanctification of His Name, 
pledged to solicitude for the conversion of the world. 
Loving His praises, they cannot but be distressed with 
the scorns and blasphemies lavished on Him. Every 
new trophy of God's converting grace, is the kindling 
of a new censer to send up its odors before the throne, 
and the enlisting of a new voice to bear one day its 
part in the anthems of adoring worship in Heaven, 
and meanwhile to serve in the choir of availing inter- 
cession for earth. In each such addition to the num- 
ber of those extolling and invoking His Name, Christ 
rejoices afresh, in the new reward of His redeeming 
agonies ; — He sees of the travail of His soul and is sat- 
isfied ; the Spirit, too exults, in the fresh witness of His 
Power and Truth ; and the Father, in another prodigal 
won back from exile, and impoverishment, and perdition, 
to the paternal mansion and bosom. For errorists car- 
icature the orthodox doctrine of the churches, when 
they represent that ordinary and orthodox faith, as 
making the Father the austere and inflexible, and 



LECTURE II. 45 

Christ the loving and gracious. The Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost are alike free and gracious, and 
abounding in mercy. And the Atonement, which also 
these errorists travesty, is not Love in the Son sacri- 
ficed to vengeance in the Father ; but Mercy guarding 
Holiness, and Holiness commissioning Mercy ; the 
harmonizing in one wondrous Redeeming Scheme, of 
the common attributes of each person in the adorable 
Trinity. "We say this in passing. To return then ; 
each new convert is a new point of radiation for the 
Divine glory. God glories over them, and good men 
and angels glorify God in them. For whilst thus 
glorifying God in aiding the conversion of others, we 
not only hallow the Name here, but we enhance the 
joys and songs of those who hallow it th°,re. The 
celestial echo is deeper and louder than the earthly 
joy of a church on the footstool here below, welcom- 
ing the convert whase deliverance awakens that re- 
mote rejoicing, and those higher melodies. For the 
penitent here, and his Christian associates on earth, 
do not understand either the terrors of the woe now 
escaped, or the horrors of the sin now forgiven, or the 
glories of the salvation now won, or the holiness of the 
Master and Friend now found, — as all these are under- 
stood by those who stand within the veil, and see the 
hid len realities and the just relations of eternal things. 
Die ive know as they know, would the Name which 
they hymn without weariness, and extol above every 
name, be as it is with us vilified and blasphemed, as 
sinners vilify and blaspheme it ; or would it, on the 
other hand, be evaded and concealed as by Christians 



46 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

;t too often is, from shame and the fear of man, veiled 
and evaded ? 

And, lastly, there is another mode of hallowing tho 
Divine Name, of which the thought may well awe 
us. When Mercy has failed to win, Justice will come 
forth to subdue and incarcerate. Evil shall not b* 
admitted to range God's Universe on its mission ol 
profanation and defilement. The whole creation, mute 
and irrational, is seen groaning because made subject 
to man's vanity, but it has been thus subjected no1 
willingly and only for a time. It must be released 
and avenged. God's sanctity was of old illustrated 
in the blasted forms and scattered censers of Na« 
dab and Abihu. His comment upon it was, " I will 
be sanctified in them that 4 come nigh me, and before 
all the people will I be glorified."^ The cities of 
the plain smoked beneath the avenging bolts of that 
Holiness. Jerusalem, the guilty, had her times of 
calamity and overthrow, from the Incarnate Love 
which she had spurned, and the crucified Holi- 
ness she had mocked. And when the foul deities 
of Greek and Roman idolatry quitted their fallen 
shrines, and Pan left to Christ the lands and the 
tribes long deluded and down-trampled, God's name 
was hallowed. Earth — all earth is to pass through 
a fiery deluge, and long the haunt of Sin, she is to 
roll out of the burning baptism a new heaven and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness — a habita- 
tion of holiness. But the filthy of our race w T ill, even 
then, be the filthy still ; and over their prison-house* 
* Leviticus x. 3. 



LECTURE II. 47 

and upon the dark folds of the cloud of their torment, 
(rod's name will be inscribed, — hallowed in Ven- 
geance, as in Paradise it is hallowed in Mercy. In 
one mode or the other, as the repentant or as the obdu- 
rate, — with the golden harp of the world of light, or in 
the clanking fetters of eternal darkness, — we inevitably 
must, we assuredly shall, hallow the great Name. In 
which method shall it be ? As Samsons, pinioned 
and writhing in the dungeon,— -or as the restored 
prodigal, feasting in abashed gratitude and unutter- 
able joy at the father's board forever ? Choose wisely, 
— choose soon ; for an eternal Heaven or an eternal 
Hell awaits the swaying of the poised balances. 



"€jni lingkm &mt" 



LECTURE 111. 

"flltj lingiimi Cmro." 

Matthew, vi 10. 

Has it not come ? Must the Most High await the 
prayers of His creatures ere He can become a King ? 
Is His dominion yet but remote and lingering, and 
can the world and Satan thwart and retard it ? Cer- 
tainly not, as to the kingdom of his Providence ; — his 
sovereign and uncontrollable sway as the Former and 
Upholder of all things. The Saviour Himself teaches, 
in this very discourse, that universal oversight and 
supremacy of His Father, and presents it as being 
already come ; when He tells of his clothing each lily, 
and feeding all the birds of the air, and making the 
showers to fall and the sun to rise, on every field 
of every tiller, around the globe. He who numbers 
the very hairs of our head, and marks the falling 
sparrow, and wheels along its orbit each vast and roll- 
ing world, needs not, and waits not for us to supply 
His sceptre, or to weave His imperial robes, or to con- 
fer, by our vote and election, His crown. The very 
necessity of His nature, — as the all-pervading, and the 



52 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Most High, the Wisest, Best, and Mightiest of Exist- 
ences, — makes rule inseparable from his being. Sove- 
reignty and Existence, are with Him indivisible. He 
that*"\VAS and Is, and Is to Be, and whose years are 
from everlasting to everlasting, is and must be, — 
through all that Eternity,— King of kings, and Lord 
of lords ; and all other beings, in commencing their 
existence, begin it, as subordinate to Him, and depend- 
ant upon Him. Earth lies in His grasp. Hell quails 
beneath His glance. Heaven lives in His smile. And 
when, from His Throne, He proclaims, " I am that I 
am," — the Universe, through all its depths and all its 
heights, responds in submissive awe : " Thou art, and 
all things are OF Thee and BY Thee, and FOR Thee." 
But the Kingdom here intended, is something very 
different. It is the dominion of His grace, — that pro- 
vision of his Infinite Mercy, by which He is to subdue 
our sinful race into cheerful allegiance, and exulting 
homage, and general service. This, as yet, has come 
but in part. Its full and final establishment has been 
long the theme of prophecy, and the burden of prayer. 
The movements of God in His kingdom of Providence 
had respect from the beginning to the development >f 
this kingdom of Grace. It had been announced in 
the garden of Eden, in the first promise, to the first 
offenders and parents of our race. Jacob, the dying- 
patriarch, hailed its future glories in the coming of the 
Shiloh. The Jews, to whom the Psalms were a fa- 
miliar book, read in the second of those Psalms Jeho- 
joree proclaiming that kingdom, and inaugnrn- 
His Son as its potentate. Daniel, in his visions. 



LECTURE III. 53 

had seen the four great monarchies of the world, but 
coming as the rival precursors of this Greater and 
Better, and Heavenly Kingdom, imaged by the stone 
cut out of the mountains without hands, and filling 
the whole earth. John the Baptist, our Saviour's 
forerunner, had announced this kingdom as near at 
hand. The heathen, — familiar with the existence of 
predictions that pointed to the age in which Christ 
was born as the age, and to Palestine as the scene of 
His coming, — looked, then and there, to see one mak- 
ing his appearance who was to rule the world. Herod 
dreaded it, and the babes of Bethlehem were mas- 
sacred, in the hope, by that indiscriminate slaughter, 
to destroy the Predestined King of Israel .and of all 
other nations. Pilate put over the cross of Jesus an 
inscription, not that Christ claimed to be, but that he 
was this King of the Jews ; and the dying thief prayed 
to be remembered of his crucified Lord, when that 
Lord should come into the full possession of this his 
kingdom. Under various names, this kingdom was 
the subject of reference by our Saviour, and by his 
apostles after his ascension. Some of the expressions 
employed seem to represent it as future; and others, 
as, in part at least, already come ; whilst, by the 
countrymen and contemporaries of our Saviour, the 
very nature of the kingdom was misunderstood. The 
ancient Jew desired but political liberty and carnal 
aggrandizement; and nailed, in scornful ingratitude, 
to the accursed tree the hand that offered him but the 
pardon of sins, and eternal life, and a home and a 
throne in light, instead of the earthly and mortal joys, 



54 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the carnal and perishable honors, the poor and corrupt- 
ible kingdom, which he was coveting. The threefold 
spell, which Satan tried in vain on our Saviour, in the 
wilderness, Rabbinism had wielded over the Jewish 
people but too long and too entirely. They, unlike 
Jesus, preferred bread, perishable and earthly bread, 
to the word of God. They tempted the Most High by 
expecting deliverance and impunity, merely because 
they were the children of Abraham, though they flung 
themselves down, in blind temerity, from the old and 
spiritual faith of their father, as from the pinnacle of 
a temple. They, unlike Christ, were willing to do 
the world and its prince some homage, if they might 
but gain its kingdoms and the glory of them ; and 
for these, the promised rewards of the Tempter, they 
looked confidingly and patiently, whilst a recovered 
Heaven, proffered by the Redeemer, swept rejected 
past them. Does it seem harsh to any, to represent 
the hardness of impenitent Israel as being the result 
of the influence of the Evil one ? It is, alas, the 
testimony of Scripture, that not Israel alone, in their 
obduracy, but all who receive not Christ, of the Gen- 
tiles as well, are following Belial if they serve not 
Jesus. As Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, 
said so earnestly and often, the whole world is ranged 
within but two camps ; over the one floats the banner 
of the Dragon, and his name is Apollyon, the Destroyer, 
and, above the other, is waving the standard of the 
crucified Lamb, and His name is Emmanuel, " God 
with us," the only Saviour. The kingdom of Dark- 
ness, and the kingdom of Lisdit, divide the race ; and 



LECTURE III. 55 

each convert and recruit to the sacramental host of 
God's elect is described as being translated out of the 
kingdom and power of darkness, having there been by 
nature a child of wrath, earning the vengeance of the 
Almighty God. 

Our own land, in the times of its revolutionary 
struggles, knew the miseries and snares of a contested 
allegiance. Then, the bonds of blood were not found 
sufficient to keep all of the same home and stock, 
firm on the side either of royalty or republicanism. 
The same household had its political divisions ; and 
father was set against child, and brother against 
brother, in their divergent views of interest and safety 
and duty. So now, a more momentous and a moral 
revolution is in its quiet progress. It is resisted, 
madly and widely. It is sustained and urged on- 
ward, with unfaltering zeal and eager hope. But the 
friends and the foes of this spiritual kingdom are 
often united together by the tenderest and closest of 
earthly bonds. And yet we know, that it is no light 
matter, in its results, to himself and to others, where 
a man bestows his obedience and subjection. He who 
contests the rightful government of the land which 
he inhabits, will find the tax-gatherer and the magis- 
trate, and the soldier, — if his resistance require it, — 
all against him. So he who withholds from the Maker 
of his soul its submission, and from the Creator of the 
Universe the control of His creatures, must not deem 
his offence venial ; or suppose that his punishment 
will be either lightly inflicted or easily evaded. If 
any ask, "Why is not the full power of God's Frovi- 



56 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

dential Empire put forth at once, to crush all opposi- 
tion to the Messiah's Kingdom of Grace, we answer: 
Are such objectors sure, that in so doing God would 
as much benefit the interests of all His moral creation, 
as by allowing the delay and the seeming impunity, 
which give to sin, for the time, its freer scope, and 
allow it to show more fully its deadly malignity — or 
as Paul phrases it, — its exceeding sinfulness ? How 
do they know, but that this slow evolution of His 
purposes, and this long and varied trial of man's in- 
ventions in religion, and of earth's substitutes for 
Heaven,— and this incarnation of the Son to atone, — 
and this descent of the Spirit to restore and sanctify, 
— may be just the process which gathers upon our 
tiny planet the eyes of all orders and all orbs of crea- 
tion, and makes the angels desire to look into the 
mysteries of Grod's Church here, as showing more 
fully than anywhere else is shown, how just is the 
Law, condemning sin ; how vast the Love cancelling 
sin ; and how mad the Unbelief that spurns this love 
and the proffered redemption, and clasps in preference 
the sin thus denounced, and the menaced perdition ? 
May not the battle-ground, supplied by this our earth 
be that, where the Grood and Evil of a wide Universe 
and of a vast Eternity find their point of collision, 
and settle once and settle forever their destinies ? And 
though, to us, the mystery of G-od's Kingdom on earth 
may seem drawn through many centuries, and sub- 
jected to needless and tedious reverses, may not the 
stage be in fact narrow , compared with the vast am- 
phitheatre, all crowded with being, that eyes it ; and 



LECTURE III. 57 

may not the lapse of time, in the action of the drama, 
and in the arrival of the catastrophe be really brief, 
when measured against the eternity whose moral 
character it forever adjudicates? Our world, and the 
Church of (rod in that world, may be the lock and 
bar with which Grod shuts out Sin from its further 
devastations of His Universe, and w^hen a Grod comes 
down not only to ransom our race, but, in His own 
stay here, and in the career of His earthly Church, to 
display to all ages and all ranks, and all hierarchies of 
His creatures, the true character of His legislation, 
and the true enormity of the sin that would impugn 
His laws and rights ; — is not the object great enough 
to deserve the cost of the sacrifice ? May not the 
lock well be intricate, that is to guard the purity of a 
universe, and to fix in bliss and to secure in inviolable 
order, an eternity of being ? 

Having thus seen, in the first place, the relations 
of the kingdom of Providence to that of Grace, which 
last is the theme of the petition in our text ; let us now 
consider the several aspects of that kingdom. Let us 
observe, then, that this, the Kingdom of Grod is, 

I. Spiritual ; 

II. It is social ; 

III. It is Eternal. 

These, three of its aspects, lead naturally to the 
consideration of several stages of its gradual develop- 
ment. 

I. It is spiritual. As man's noblest nature is his 
inner, invisible, and spiritual one, it is to this mainly, 
that Grod and the religion of Grod look. The Jews 

3* 



58 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

confounded the kingdom of their Messiah with earthly 
sovereignties ; and would have debased its privileges, 
and laws, and polity, to the low and carnal level of a 
Solomon, an Ahab, a Herod, or an Augustus. But 
Christ, as we read in Luke's gospel, warned the Phar- 
isees, the admired guides of the nation in religion, that 
they had utterly misreckoned as to the character of 
their expected sovereign, and of his long-expected do- 
minion. # " And when he was demanded of the Phar- 
isees when the kingdom of Grod should come, he an- 
swered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh 
not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo 
here ! or Lo there ! for behold the kingdom of Grod is 
within youP Had our Saviour, when the Jews, after 
the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, would by 
force have taken him and made him a King, yielded 
to their wishes ; and had he given to the rabble of 
proselytes thus made, earthly bread, and glory, and 
victory ; the synagogues would soon have emptied 
their crowds into his ranks, and Scribe and Pharisee 
would have posted and scattered his proclamations 
over Palestine, and would themselves most loudly have 
shouted Hosanna, instead of rebuking the children who 
did it as he entered Jerusalem. Had our Saviour, 
when He stood before Pilate, called down the twelve 
legions of angels, that but waited His bidding to dart 
earthward ; and had Christ given to the Roman gov- 
ernor the lieutenancy of these His celestial levies, and 
the reversion of the throne of the Caesars ; the Roman 
governor would boldly have avouched the innocency 
* Luke xvii. 20, 21. 



LECTURE III. 59 

of his prisoner, not to the Jews only, as he did, but to 
his Roman lord as well. But, if the Jews still loved 
iniquity in their hearts, and remained the adulterous 
and sinful generation which the Saviour had already 
proclaimed them to be ; could they have been really 
happy in freedom, and worldly splendor, and opulence ? 
Would the heart have been free ? And had Pilate 
still known nothing of the grace of Grod in the work- 
ings of his soul, that " inner man," as the Scripture 
entitles it, could all the power and rank, which in- 
vested the " outer man," have made him either better 
or happier, than was the foul and bloody Tiberius 
whom he would have displaced ? The world are, in 
our own times, but beginning to learn, (what the Bible 
would have told them long centuries since,) that the 
reforms, and comforts, and emancipations, which are 
merely external and bodily, are not satisfying, and are 
not enduring. Hence men see, that to make a nation 
capable of using or of keeping freedom, or to render 
self-government possible, you must not only remove 
the oppressor, and bring the wheels of revolution over 
the framework of the government ; but you must, in 
addition to this external relief, apply an inner and 
mental preparation. You must educate men to pre- 
serve them from inventing and setting up some new 
oppressor ; and to keep them from rebuilding their old 
and overthrown Bastiles, and from restoring their dis- 
carded tyrants. So, it is felt that the richest gold 
mines, and a fertile soil, and teeming harvests, cannot 
give plenty to a tribe or avert wretchedness from a 
bland and favored clime; except you mentally prepare 



60 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the people, by thrift, and temperance, and self-control, 
to gather, and husband, and use the abundance which 
they receive. The outer goods of earth are seen to 
need the inner graces of the soul, in order to sustain 
them ; or they bring no real relief. Bind around the 
brow of Herodias the jewelled diadem of the Imperial 
City ; would that guilty head have known true repose ? 
Let the power which took away Philip the Evangelist 
from the side of the Ethiopian eunuch, after his bap- 
tism, have snatched up the traitor apostle Judas, just 
as he was meditating suicide, and have placed him as 
Treasurer of the Empire, in the post where his pre- 
dominant covetousness could have full indulgence in 
the care of all that empire's wealth : — could all the 
gold of all the Candaces have assuaged the pangs of a 
mind diseased, and quelled the gnawing remorse, 
which he found in his recollections of the betrayal, and 
of Gethsemane, and of Calvary ? 

Now the roots of Satan's tyranny, of the despotism 
of sin, and of the misery of mankind, are in the in- 
most soul of man. All that does not reach these roots, 
is but a deceptive, and superficial, and transitory re- 
form. Christ came to lay the axe to the root of the 
tree, — to assail the strong man of sin in the strong 
hold of the human heart. To teach men superiority 
. to their ordinary and hereditary idols, he renounced 
for himself wealth, and fame, and rank, and science. 
His dominion is spiritual. The power that is to 
change the face of earth, and the history of the race, 
is not an army, — not a fleet, — not a treasury ; but a 
word of salvation, — something of the mind, and for 



LECTURE III. 



61 



the mind — and it is a Spirit renewing and sanctifying 
— the creative Spirit come down, to rear again and re- 
store our fallen, created spirits. Men's first and fellest 
foes are their own sins. These— our own fallen nature, 
and our own evil propensities ; the world around us, 
in its evil, spiritual influences, — ever soliciting and 
contaminating us ; and Satan, the unseen, but restless 
and subtle spirit of Temptation and Delusion, — these 
are the Philistine and the Amalekite, against whom 
war is to be waged, if Liberty is ever to be more than 
a name. Sin has brought into the commonwealth of 
the human soul utter anarchy and violent and grind- 
ing tyranny. The conscience and the affections are 
at internal variance. Passion rules, but conscience, 
down-trodden, and drugged, and blinded, protests, 
faintly and low, it may be, but still stubbornly and 
long. "Who shall heal the anarchy and expel the 
tyranny ? Is the work to be done by outward observ- 
ances, and the merit of bodily services, and austeri- 
ties, and sacraments ; or by aught less than the spirit- 
ual and the Divine ? No — the Atoning Blood and the 
Regenerating Spirit, these can, and these only ; and 
Ji is in their train, that peace comes. " For," as said 
Pau to the Christians of Rome, " the kingdom of God 
is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, 
and joy in the Holy Crhost." # And every view of the 
Church of Jesus, or of this kingdom of Heaven, which 
overlooks this spiritual element in its fundamental 
character, does the Kingdom and Church injury ; and 
must work an ultimate corruption of the Church, and 
* Rom. xiv. 11. 



62 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

an inevitable retardation of its progress and triumphs. 
Our being born in a christian land, does not make us 
Christ's people. As an old father in the first ages of 
the Church said, " Men are not born Christians, they 
are made sueh." # So, the Protestant Church of 
France, in our own times, — at least its purer portion; 
- — laments the worldliness, and heresies, and scandals, 
brought into its communion by a merely nominal and 
hereditary Protestantism ; as one of their writers re- 
cently complained, — " One is born a Protestant Chris- 
tian, by right divine, and instead of the confession of 
his faith, he presents his pedigree. "f So the name 
" Christendom" misguides us, if we suppose that all 
born within certain territorial limits, are, by nativity 
and education, parcel of Christ's kingdom and sub- 
jects. Now, as the Holy Ghost is the great primal 
agency in advancing and upholding the spiritual do- 
minion of God on earth, aught that grieves or repels 
Him, — aught that assumes to replace Him in His 
prerogatives, or claims to mortgage Him to a certain 
ecclesiastical communion, or to imprison Him in cer- 
tain ordinances, as dispensed by a certain order of 
men, and, above all, aught that forgets our depend- 
ence on Him, or affects independence of Him and His 
aids, — is so far a hindrance in the way of the coming 
of this spiritual empire. To enter ourselves Christ's 
church, or to aid others in advancing it, we must be 
born of the Spirit. 

II. But we said that the kingdom of God was not 
only spiritual, but social. What is in the man's heart 

* Tertullian. f Le Semeur, 13th Septemb. 1848, p. 288. 



LECTURE III. 63 

will soon work its way out upon the man's actions, 
and his associates. Though religion begins with the 
individual, it, after having renovated the inner world 
of the heart, necessarily affects the outer world, or the 
man in all his relations to his fellow-creatures ; both 
those of like feelings with himself, or men spiritually 
minded, and those also, who are not yet in affinity 
and sympathy with him, or as the Scripture calls this 
last class, the men who are carnally minded. If a man 
is a true disciple of Jesus, he is, or ought to be, the 
better man in all his relations to worldly society, as far 
as those relations do not assume to control and over- 
top his duties and relations to Heaven. Peter's con- 
version to Christ's service, did not exempt him from 
tribute to Csesar, but probably made him more prompt 
and conscientious in the payment of his dues to the 
civil ruler, than the impenitent fjsherman of the 
Galilean sea had been wont to be in his earlier days ; 
and Paul's change on the way to Damascus made 
him all the more amiable and useful, as a citizen, a 
friend, and a guest, and a fellow- voyager. 

Religion is social. It seeks the communion of the 
saints. It forms the Church, and sustains its ordi- 
nances, and administers and abides its discipline, and 
guards its purity, and seeks its increase — the multi- 
plication of its converts and the growth of its holi- 
ness, and the augmented energy of its prayers. And 
the Church, kept pure and spiritual and heavenly, 
sheds through all the social channels it reaches, new and 
healing influences. It is diffusive, alike by its origin 
and by its destiny. Come from Heaven, it has the ex- 

3* 



34 the lord's prayer. 

pansiveness of its birth-place and the wide charity 
of its Divine Author. Preparing its proselytes for 
Heaven, and claiming to win, one day, the whole earth 
back again to its renounced allegiance, — its plans, 
its hopes, and its covenant — all its views of the 
Future, — make it a vine shooting its branches over 
the walls of the family, and over the enclosures of 
the sect, and over the boundaries of the nation, till 
the earth rejoices in its shadow and regales on its 
clusters. 

But though it is to affect all nations, it is rather 
indirectly than by direct influence. It is to leaven 
the education, and literature, and politics, and arts, and 
commerce, of the earth. But it is not by becoming 
itself a school of philosophy, or a political power, or by 
undertaking to engross the arts, or to pursue as an 
ecclesiastical corporation the trades or traffic of the 
times. Its business is with souls. But the souls 
which it reaches will, when once swayed by its new 
principles, consecrate all their share in the world's 
concerns more or less directly to the interests and 
honor of the Great Head of the Church. That godly 
man errs on the one hand, who taking a Manichean 
view of the world, as if Providence were no longer 
there, would fain go out of the world, and abandon 
all secular tasks and snap all terrene bonds, as if in 
themselves unchristian. But, on the other hand, 
those divines and statesmen err quite as egregiously, 
and with a more baleful effect on Truth and Holiness, 
who would subsidize the Church for political purposes, 
and make the Redeemer of the world and the Sove- 



LECTURE III. 65 

reign of the Universe, the stipendiary of their petty- 
principalities. The Erastianism that would subject 
religion and the Church to the civil magistrate, vir- 
tually proposes to Jesus a partnership in the Kingdom 
of Heaven, which should make the state competent 
to say, as it looked over the Church : " Our kingdom 
come, and our will be done on earth and in heaven." 

In our country, we forswear religious establishments. 
And so far we may think, that we are in no danger of 
misconstruing the social character of Christ's church 
and kingdom. But in our own democratic, as in the 
monarchical governments of the old world, there may 
remain evils social and political yet to be remedied. 
"Will the gospel reach these ; and if so, how ? By the 
individual influence of Christians as citizens, we sup- 
pose, rather than by the Church's formal and organ- 
ized operation, as the Church ; and also by the gradual 
absorption into the mind of the nation, even in the 
case of the unconverted of them, — of some isolated 
and single truths of the Christian system, or by suf- 
fusing the national conscience with some great evan- 
gelical principles. We think, it might be shown, that 
nearly every step, in the progress of European civiliza- 
tion and freedom, has been the taking up into the 
national conscience and polity, of some single truth of 
the great system of christian faith and christian 
ethics. Chivalry owed all that it had of good, its 
honor and courtesy, and regard to the feelings and 
rights of woman, — all of good it had, — to the princi- 
ples of the gospel. So modern democracy, in its sense 
of the equal rights of all, and of the responsibility of 



66 THE lord's prayer. 

governments, is but carrying out other detached por- 
tions of christian truth. The Reformation, was but 
the moral virtue, streaming out of the unclasped 
Bible of Christianity, as that virtue began to op- 
erate upon the habits and institutions of the na- 
tions. Education and Commerce and Art, — so far as 
they keep themselves in a position of due deference to 
a pure Christianity, — will elevate and bless society. 
So far as they shall rival or defy her, they cannot fail 
to disappoint the hopes which they excite, and to bloat 
the body politic into a diseased appearance of prosper- 
ity, the unsoundness of which any great reverse of 
affairs will soon betray. Pauperism, Slavery, and the 
question of Labor in our times, can be reached most 
safely and effectively, by christian principles diffused 
throughout the community. The gospel is not a mere 
Peasants' War, or a servile insurrection ; nor is the 
church a Phalanstery, or a Political Constitution, or 
an Academy. But, on the other hand, the spiritual 
members of Christ's church, the "twice-born" disci- 
ples of the Nazarene, and of the Nazarene's gospel, 
cannot, in their prior and paramount regard to men's 
spiritual necessities, therefore, overlook or mock men's 
"physical and terrestrial maladies and needs. Jesus 
taught, and thus benefitted the soul ; but he also 
healed the blind, lame, and dumb, and thus benefitted 
the body. The gospel has its Brainerds, and Careys, 
and Martyns, heroes of spiritual labor ; and it has also 
had its Howards and Frys, its heroes and heroines of 
more secular toils. The kingdom of Grod, then, will 
work socially ', not by usurping worldly gc vernment, 



LECTURE III. 67 

but by influencing individually those who control gov- 
ernment. Ceesar must have Csesar's rights and dues, 
whilst Grod has what is (rod's ; as Christ solved the 
problem when ensnaringly presented to Him. And 
the Church and the State will occupy positions and 
relations that interlace but do not coalesce ; and the 
men of the Church or the State who plan their coa- 
lescence, will be seen to work a mutual corruption. 
Indeed, we believe that secular rulers are beginning to 
feel, more and more, the narrowness, and material and 
mortal and terrestrial character of their powers ; and 
that it is their consequent need to invoke the presence 
and the power of Christ's religion, which shall occupy, 
uncontrolled and unsalaried, its own higher and inde- 
pendent position, as the great conservative principle in 
the Morals, and the Literature, and the Commerce, and 
the Polity of Society — " the salt of the earth," preserv- 
ing and vitalizing the entire mass. 

III. But whilst this religion, beginning in the indi- 
vidual and spiritual man, works inevitably its way 
outward upon all social relations and interests and 
maladies, it is, unlike the government and institutions 
of earth, eternal. So Daniel described it, " a domin- 
ion that shall never end." The churches of earth are 
but like the receiving-ships of a navy, from which death 
is daily drafting the instructed and adept recruit, for his 
entrance upon service in the far and peaceful seas of 
the heavenly world. Christ asks the heart, and the 
homage of the deathless spirit ; and, as death moul- 
ders and disperses, for a time, the bodily tabernacle, 
He neither loses His rights in, nor His care over, the 



68 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

spirit, which that bodily tabernacle for the time housed. 
Now the Kingdom of Heaven has already known, amid 
seeming and local reverses, its stages of regular exten- 
sion and advancement. It has overspread a large por- 
tion of the globe. The most powerful nations of the 
world are its nominal adherents. Missions are diffus- 
ing it, on this very Sabbath, amongst tribes whose 
names, even, our fathers knew not ; and in empires 
which those fathers deemed hopelessly barred against 
the access of our faith. Prophecy assures us that this 
shall go on with still augmented zeal, and still ex- 
panding conquests. The Jews shall be brought in. 
Mohammedanism shall fall, and is even now evidently 
withering. Antichrist shall be shattered. These are 
stages in the social development of Christ's blessed 
kingdom. But, behind and above them, come higher 
developments in the individual Christian. The Resur- 
rection is to come, bringing back from decay and obliv- 
ion the now mouldered, but then glorified body. The 
Redeemer is to reappear as the Judge of quick and 
dead. The institutions, and generations, and kingdoms 
of earth are to disappear. The world itself, our mate- 
rial globe, is to shift its robes, not as when the deluge 
of waters covered it, to become after the change the 
home of an erring Noah and of a mocking Ham, and 
of a race running again the old career of apostasy and 
misery and death ; — but that it may be re-clothed, as 
" a New Heaven and a New Earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness." Heaven, in its present state, far as our 
face is concerned, is but a preparatory stage for that 
greater and more august scene, when Sin shall have lost 



LECTURE III. 69 

ftll further scope here, and when Judgment shall have 
been instituted and meted, both individually and uni- 
versally and unalterably. The righteous, here, have in 
their earthly homes, but lodges in the wilderness. The 
most prosperous of earthly churches is but a green 
booth, reared by pilgrims beside the fountains of Elim, 
and w T hich is soon to be forsaken in their onward 
inarch beyond the line of the present visible horizon. 
But, in the heavenly Canaan, there is a fixedness of 
tenure, and perpetual repose, and fulness of felicity, — 
of knowledge, — and of holiness. Towards this crown- 
ing and culminating state of the Redeemer's Kingdom, 
all the earlier and inferior stages tend. Zion's sor- 
rows are disciplinary ; her reverses but school her for 
a more successful onset on the powers and strongholds 
of Darkness ; and with the destinies of her Redeemer 
embarked in her, and with Infallibility and Omnipo- 
tence united in her Helmsman, her course, like His, is 
" conquering and to conquer." Now, when the word 
of (rod speaks of this Kingdom, it sometimes alludes 
to its incipient, and sometimes to its advancing, and 
sometimes again to its final stages. In its spiritual 
and individual beginnings it is within us. In its so- 
cial leaven reaching the tribe, the nation, and the 
race, it is around us. In its last and triumphant day, 
it is no longer a matter of Time and Earth. It is beyond 
and above. It has come in splendor never to wane, 
in power never to be lessened ; and the kings of the 
earth bring their glory into its gates never to be closed. 
To pray, then, for Christ's Kingdom, is to pray for 
the conversion of sinners, and the edification and 



70 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

sanctification of disciples. It is to ask the evangeliza- 
tion of the Gentiles and the restoration of the Jews. 
It is to implore that Antichrist may fall, and the idols 
perish from under the whole Heaven. It is to profess 
sympathy with all that relieves and elevates, and en- 
franchises man ; and to implore the removal of all 
that corrupts and debases him, and that sells him, 
soul and body, to the service of the Evil One. It is 
the bannered motto, — the rallying word, — the battle- 
cry of all who love Jesus. The souls of the martyrs 
under God's altar, cry it, in substance, when they 
say, " How long, Lord God ?" The brute creation, 
as it groans under the bondage of vanity, lifts to 
Heaven a mutely eloquent look, as it sighs to be de- 
livered, by its true King, the paramount Lord, ever kind 
and ever just. And did we, my beloved hearers, know 
but aright the necessities of our kind, and the truest, 
deepest wants of our own souls, the hourly burden of 
intercession from our acts, and plans, and alms, and 
prayers, would still be, "Let thy kingdom comeP 
It is not the wish of idle dreamers. Some among the 
noblest of earth's thinkers have felt it. Hear the 
blind bard of England, as he cried, in prospect of the 
moral, and social, and religious reformation of his 
people. It is the language of one of Milton's prose 
tracts that we quote, written in the days of the Com- 
monwealth : " 0, Thou the ever-begotten Light and 
perfect Image of the Father, intercede ! # # * Who 
is there, that cannot trace thee now, in thy beamy 
walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst thoso 
golden candlesticks which have long suffered a dim- 



LECTURE III. 71 

ness among us ? * # # # Come, therefore, Thou 
that hast the seven stars in thy right hand, appoint 
thy chosen priests according to their orders, and 
courses of old, to minister before Thee, and duly to 
press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy 
and ever-burning lamps. *\* * And as Thou didst 
dignify our fathers' days with many revelations above 
all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the flesh ; so, 
thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as large 
a portion of thy Spirit as thou pleasest ; for who shall 
prejudice thy all-governing will ? seeing, the power 
of thy grace is not passed away with the primitive 
times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy 
kingdom, is now at hand, and thou standing at the 
door. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, 0, 
Prince of all the kings of the earth ! put on the visi- 
ble robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that un- 
limited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath be- 
queathed thee ; for now the voice of thy bride calls 
Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed. " # 

Does this seem too gorgeous a hope ? Hear the 
language of one whom we suppose Grod to have 
blessed with a yet sublimer intellect, and who was 
more thoroughly subdued into the penitent and lowly 
spirit of the gospel than was Milton. It is Pascal, 
whom we would next quote. Borrowing in part, 
probably, his imagery from St. Augustine, thus he 
paints the detachment from earth and the heavenward 
longings of the Christian spirit : 

"All that is in the world is but the lust of the 
* Milton's Prose Works, Lond. 1835, p. 66. 



72 THE lord's prayer. 

flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life.* 
Wretched is that land of the curse, which these 
three rivers of fire traverse, rather to consume than 
to irrigate it. But happy those who, though placed 
beside these flaming streams, are not plunged be- 
neath them, and not swept away by them ; but 
who remain immoveably fixed. Not indeed proudly 
erect, but set down on a seat lowly and safe, whence 
they raise themselves not iip until the day break. 
But after having there peacefully reposed, they stretch 
out the hand to Him, whose it is to raise them up, 
that He may place them erect and firm within the 
gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem, where pride will 
no more assail and overthrow them. But who, in the 
meanwhile, weep ; — not that they see passing away 
all these perishable objects swept onward by these 
torrents, but as they recollect their own beloved coun- 
try, that Jerusalem in the heavens which they inces 
santly remember throughout the long tediousness of 
their exile. "f 

Men, then, whom it would not be easy to impeach, 
as displaying either feebleness of intellect, or poverty 
of genius, have looked to this kingdom as the crown 
of their hopes and the sum of all earth's wants. Are 
we, my hearers, like minded? Or is our interest 
with the adverse power, whose possessions and enjoy- 
ments, and fame, and pride, Death and the Judgment 

* 1 John ii. 16. Libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, libido dominandi-— 
(the lust of pleasure, the lust of knowledge, and the lust of rule.) 

\ Pensees de Pascal, Renouard's ed., (Paris, 1812,) t. II pp. 171, 172. 
Faugere's ed., 1. 1, p. 232. 



LECTURE III. 73 

will soon and irrecoverably smite ? Have we chosen 
the sinning, losing side, in the great controversy that 
agitates Earth and divides the Universe ? The King- 
dom of God ought to come, and must come, and as- 
suredly will come. Shall its final triumphs only 
bury our hopes and souls in ruin ? Shall the car of 
the conquering Redeemer trail us defeated and cap- 
tive in the dust ? Shall Christ be by us refused as 
the Sovereign and Saviour, that we may perforce con- 
front Him as the Victor and Judge, and Avenger, 
commanding those his enemies that would not have 
him reign over them to be slain ? Happy they, whose 
lips, and hearts, and lives maintain, in sweet accord, 
this as their continual petition, " Thy Kingdom 
come ;" and who take up, with the full consent of 
their souls, the closing promise of the Bible and the 
prayer which attends it, " Surely, I come quickly : 
A-men. Even so, Come ! Lord Jesus I" 

4 



u €ijq mill k hut n furilj m it b itt fymm" 



LECTURE IV. 

" €ljtj; mill k font nit *artjr m it w in tytawt." 

Matthew, vi. 10. 

This petition is often quoted as if it were merely a 
prayer for meek resignation ; or, as though it con- 
tained but an echo of the sobbings of Grethsemane. 
But whilst this is certainly included, the prayer seems 
to comprise much more ; and to ask for Christian 
energy, as well as for Christian endurance ; and for 
diligence as much as patience. It is not only the 
motto of that blessed Redeemer, as He is beheld mute- 
ly suffering, but also as He is presented, incessantly 
and effectually laboring. It recalls Him not merely 
as seen when undergoing anguish and shame at his 
death ; but also as when, at the well of Samaria, He, 
though wearied, witnesses faithfully to the truth, and 
watches vigilantly for souls ; or as, when in earlier 
years, He though yet but a mere stripling, confounds 
the doctors in the temple. To his parents, in the one 
case, he spoke of being about His Father's business ;* 
and to his disciples, in the other instance, He declared 
* Luke il 40. 



78 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

that it was thus, "His meat" " to do the will of the 
Father that sent Him, and to finish his work."* As 
He was himself the only perfect embodiment which 
the world has ever seen, of His own gospel, His own 
acts become thus the unerring commentary upon His 
precepts, as to prayer, and each other duty in which 
He placed Himself on the same level and platform of 
obligation with His disciples. The sentence of our text 
is then seen written not merely over the sufferer upon 
the cross of Golgotha. It is inscribed as well over the 
manger of the Infant, incarnate at Bethlehem. For 
in the Incarnation as well as in the Atonement — in 
his birth as much as in his death, — prophets and apos- 
tles represent our Lord as adopting virtually this lan- 
guage. The fortieth Psalm, as quoted and expounded 
in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
represents our Lord at his entrance upon his earthly 
labors, in survey of his whole mortal career as it lay 
between the stable where shepherds found him and 
the sepulchre where Joseph the Arimathean laid him, 
as saying, " L6 I come to do thy will, God ;"t — 
"A body hast thou prepared me ;"t or as the Psalmist 
has it, " I delight to do thy will, my Gtod, yea, thy 
law is within my heart." § All Christ's obedience in life, 
as well as his obedience unto death, is then embraced 
in the sentiment and spirit of the petition before us. 
There would be another incongruity in giving to the 
present sentence merely the narrow construction of 
resignation to suffering ; it is that angels and saints 

* John iv. 34. f Heb. x. 9. 

% Heb. x. 5. § Psalm xL 8. 



LECTURE IV. 79 

in Heaven could scarce be presented to us, in the man- 
ner in which here they are, as our patterns. Patterns 
th$y could not well be of those who are enduring evils, 
since from all evil they are now and forevermore ex- 
empt. But give to the petition the wider scope of 
conformity to the Father's will, — in action as well as 
in submission, — let it be the Lord's will done, as well 
as the Lord's will borne, — endeavored as well as en- 
dured, — and you may readily see how the glorified 
worshippers on high — those who continually and per- 
fectly and cheerfully obey the Father's wishes — may 
well be made models for our imitation, and their zeal 
furnish a burning incentive to our flagging emulation. 
It is the language of adoring obedience. Every vibra- 
tion of the seraph's wing, and every tone of the saint's 
harp, in the world of light, is each but an act of defer- 
ence and conformity to the Divine will. Thus far, 
then,- the church militant and the church triumphant 
are in harmony with one another. The Lord's Prayer 
begins with the acknowledgment of (rod's rights as 
our Father. Then followed the ascription of worship : 
" Hallowed be thy Name." Next came the recogni- 
tion of sovereignty: "Thy Kingdom come;" and now 
succeeds the acknowledgment of service, as due to the 
Parent, the God, and the King. This petition, then, 
asks grace to obey Grod's arrangements in His Provi- 
dence, and His appointments in His revelation. 

The petition thus strikes at a two-fold evil universally 
dominant among our fallen race. The first of these two 
forms or faces of transgression is self-will, a disposi- 
tion to exalt our preferences and arrangements above 



80 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

those of our Maker and Ruler. The other of these is 
earthly-mindedness, or carnality, a temper that leads 
us, in the apostle's language, " to measure ourselves 
among ourselves," and to settle the extent of our obli- 
gations by the practice and fashions of the sinners 
around us, instead of ascending for models and rules 
to the higher and unfallen creatures, who have kept 
their first estate. The form of our text, then, natu 
l^lly suggests our adoption, in the consideration of ii 
/ a ''wo-fold division. 
I. The request : " Thy will oe done on earth" 
X} Tix3 standard : " As it is in Heaven" 
1. A**<i what is the will of our Heavenly Father . 
As in an eenier discourse we have seen that there wa* 
His kingdom r c Providence, a dominion already conv 
and established imc^ tta oeginning ; and His kingdort 
of Grace, a dominion Progressiva and future, whic^ 
in its fulness was yet to oc^ie, axid \7as ^o be univer 
sally established at the end of th^ world ; so, in " THt 
will" of our Great Parent and Srvermgn on high, 
there is a two-fold aspect. There an deptixj and 
heights in His will yet but very partially known. It 
is His will of control, — that sovereign and all-govern- 
ing purpose, which foresees and uses all occurrences 
and all influences, and all resistances even, — providing 
for the eruptions and the avalanches of our revolt, and 
of our sinful disregard of Him, and of our league with 
Hell, and weaving even these into His wide plans. 
Much of this controlling and overruling "Will is among 
those "secret thing's" which, as Moses declared, be- 
long only to the Lord, whilst the " thing's revealed" 



LECTURE IV. 



61 



belong more properly to us and to our children. The 
great outlines and last results of this controlling and 
sovereign purpose He has made known ; but its de- 
tails and many of its relations are as yet inscrutable 
to our limited faculties. But there is another aspect 
of his will. It is His will of command ; what He re- 
quires of us, and what He disapproves in us. This 
He makes known by the voice of reason and conscience 
in part, but more perfectly in the book of His scrip- 
tures, and by the influences of His Spirit. And as 
men, to make sure the execution of their will and 
choice, record them in covenants and testaments, so 
He, to bring nearer and make more impressive and 
obligatory, and venerable in our eyes His will, pro- 
claimed it in covenants, and ratified it in that New 
Testament which was published in the incarnation, 
and sealed with the blood of Grod the Son. The cove- 
nants of both dispensations were attested by sacrifices. 
In the old these were typical ; in the new, was mani- 
fested the one real and availing oblation of that Lamb 
slain in the Divine purposes before the foundation of 
the world. With Abraham of old Grod entered into 
covenant by passing, as a flaming fire, between the 
dissevered pieces of a slaughtered victim. Now, no 
more figuratively but really, through the rent veil 
and sundered flesh of a Redeemer's body, Grod calls 
His saints to make with Him a covenant by sacrifice, 
and to find attested in the same dread transaction the 
Last Will of a redeeming Brother, whose legacies and 
heritage come to us as from out his tomb, and who 
enriches and re-establishes us by his death. We are 

4* 



82 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the juniors and prodigals, whom the Elder Brother 
above, in no exclusive spirit like him of the parable, 
but in self-sacrificing generosity, has reconciled to the 
Father, and reinstated in the home, — rehabilitated 
and ransomed by his own atoning oblation. And if, 
my beloved hearers, it be an ungracious act, on the 
part of a favored and indulged child, and of a legatee, 
profusely endowed by the generosity of a departed 
kinsman, to contest and impeach the will of that lib- 
eral parent or kinsman, by imputing imbecility or in- 
sanity to the mind that framed this testament, it is no 
light sin, and it shall have meted to it no light recom- 
pense of vengeance, if we endeavor, in our infidel 
temerity, to set aside the Will and Testament of our 
Grod, impeaching our Redeemer of cruelty, and im- 
puting to the Omniscient and Unerring a want of 
wisdom or a lack of truth ; and claiming Earth and 
Heaven, not as the legacy of His grace, but as the 
purchase and due of our own merit. 

Grod's will of control, we said, was but partially 
known, as compared with His will of command. The 
last, which is the better known, is therefore the chief 
guide of our actions. By God's controlling will, we 
intend His pledged and unalterable purpose to over- 
rule all events and all agencies, — the revolt of earth 
and the machinations of Hell even — to the final estab- 
lishment of His own decrees, and the universal exten- 
sion of His own dominion. We see in human beings, 
even the just and the wise of the race, the same dis- 
tinction between their will of control, and their will 
of command or counsel. Take, for instance, the illus- 



LECTURE IV. 83 

trious Howard the missionary and martyr, of benevo- 
lence to the imprisoned and forsaken. This good man 
had devised, from his experience and observation, cer- 
tain rules for the better construction and governance 
of prisons. Now, if his will of counsel or command, 
so to speak, (his precepts of wisdom and kindness,) 
had been heeded by evil-doers, they would not be the 
inmates of prisons ; and the other portion of Howard's 
studies, his law of control, would be no longer needed. 
But if men, in the abuse of their freedom, did wrong, 
then in his controlling will,- — his disposition to bring 
out of the case as it stood, not as he had wished it, 
but as they had made it, the most good to society and 
to the transgressor himself,— he had his prisons pre- 
pared and arranged for the detention and restraint of 
the evil-doer. So too, a civil government, upright and 
equitable, whose just laws are threatened with resist- 
ance by a portion or by an entire province of its subjects, 
may by its will of counsel or command, urge sincerely 
and kindly, the men of the province to abide the civil 
law ; but if they scorn the milder legislation, it may 
in its will of control, proclaim, and that justly and in- 
evitably, martial law for the repression of the revolt, 
and for the avengement of its own dishonored and im- 
perilled authority. Now sin is an anomaly in Grod's 
dominions. He, allowing to His creatures in the 
angelic and human races, the exercise of freedom, may 
have permitted sin to occur, whilst His will of com- 
mand or legislation, sincerely and strictly condemns 
it ; but he so permits it only because in His will of 
control, He will ultimately restrain its ravages, and 



84 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

make its wrath to praise Him. His precepts, then, 
are one thing ; His decrees, in the event of our reject- 
ing the precepts, another thing. Of these His decrees, 
prescient and all-embracing, we have in His word but 
the dim, vast outline, traced out to us. We know 
that they include all times, all actions, and all beings. 
He saw when it was yet but shooting along the reedy 
banks of the Nile, the future application and the use 
to be macie of each twig, out of which the mother of 
Moses wove the basket-ark in which her child was 
committed to the waters of the river. "When Jehovah 
framed the everlasting mountains in the first week of 
creation, He saw in all its destinies each fragment of 
earth or stone which, centuries afterwards, the Jews 
were to take up, that they might cast them at Jesus, 
or which were to be employed in the attempted mur- 
der of Paul at Lystra, or the accomplished murder of 
Stephen at Jerusalem ; and though he might have 
hindered, Grod saw it not meet to hinder, this wicked 
misuse of this His handiwork. His eye saw, when it 
was yet in the ore and the unbroken veins of the mine, 
the silver, — each particle of it, — that was to be em- 
ployed in coining the thirty pieces of money that were, ' 
in the hands of the chief priests, to buy the fidelity of 
Judas, and to bargain for the life of our Saviour, and 
to secure at last the field of Aceldama. When it was 
yet but a seedling, he foreknew all the dread history 
of the tree that was to furnish our Redeemer's cross, 
and might have forbidden the dew to nourish or the 
soil to sustain it. With the treason and the Deicide 
he had no collusion ; and yet, in His will of control, 



LECTUREIV. 85 

He witnessed, permitted, and overruled all the steps 
of tlie wickedness that produced this dread consumma- 
tion. 

Hence it was said by an apostle, of that same event, 
the death of our Lord, that it was by the determinate 
counsel and foreknowledge of God, and yet that the 
Jews did it by wicked hands. In (rod's will of com- 
mand, it was* a crime forbidden solemnly and plainly, 
and the Jews doing it against conscience and Scrip- 
ture, and the strivings of the Spirit, did it by wicked 
hands ; and it was the very sum and concentration of 
all wickedness, the world's greatest crime. In (rod's 
wonder-working wisdom and kindness, however, his 
will of control brought good out of the unexampled evil, 
and the same event which on one side was the world's 
greatest crime, became on the other side, and in (rod's 
sovereign use of it, the world's greatest boon. But as 
God's controlling will is not our guide, and is not fully 
revealed to us for such purposes, but only God's will 
of command, which is more fully manifested, the Jews 
with open eyes infringing the last — all of them, Caia- 
phas and Herod, and all their confederates — were in- 
excusable. You may say, " Who hath resisted His 
will ?" — His will of control ? Bat Paul has antici- 
pated the cavil ; and his reply is the sufficient one : 
" Nay but man, who art thou that repliest against 
God ?"* With all thy obligations to God, and all 
thy illumination from Him, and all thy inferiority 
before Him, " who art thou," and what right hast 
thou to cross the plain path of Duty, and then to 
* Rom. ix. 19, 20. 



85 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

plead that He will make it up, through the interpola- 
tion of thy sin, into the mysterious plan of Destiny ? 
"Who authorized thee to break the fragile fence of the 
command, and then defend thyself by pleading that 
thou hast not broken the iron rod, the infrangible scep- 
tre of Providence and Predestination ? Thou hast not 
shivered this last, — not because thou wouldest not, but 
because thou couldestnot. The law of^command that 
was in thy grasp thou hast trampled under foot. The 
law of all-ruling control thou, hast not trodden down, 
because it was so high thou couldest not clamber to 
reach it. What thou couldest do against Him, thou 
didst, and thou must be punished, because it shows 
how much more thou fain wouldest do, if thou hadst 
but opportunity and scope. To leave, then, room and 
range for the exhibition of man's real character, for 
the evolving of the blossom and the full blown flower 
of his depraved heart, — to allow verge and margin 
enough for the existence of a world of probation, and 
for the manifestation of Satan's nature and will, and 
for the true fruits of the Tempter's infernal counsels,— 
God gives but the will of His command to be fully 
known; and keeps as yet in reserve and comparative 
darkness the will of His control ; just as a Legislator, 
having given his subjects, ere their revolt, just and 
full statements as to his statutes, is not bound, if they 
spurn these, to add a full and minute plan of His cam- 
paigns, when, as the Avenger, he comes forth to pun- 
ish them for the infringement of those statutes. It is 
enough for justice, that the sinner should know that 
his transgression, persisted in and remaining unre* 



LECTURE IV. 8? 

pented of, will be assuredly and eternally visited. But 
the when, and the where, and the how, God will come 
down in anger to end his probation and to begin his 
torment, he is not told, nor has he any right to require 
that he should be told. He is assured that, in the 
Omniscience and Omnipresence, and Omnipotence of 
his outraged Sovereign and Benefactor, even his rebel- 
lion can be overruled for the glory of the Throne it as- 
sails ; but it lessens not by a single shade the black- 
ness of his ingratitude, nor abates in the least from the 
greatness of his mad temerity. 

2. And now, with these explanations as to the will 
of our Father in Heaven, we see the wide comprehen- 
siveness of the petition, when we ask that the will or 
command of our Heavenly Parent may be known — for 
to be done or obeyed, it must first be known or mani- 
fested. In offering this request, we then, by necessary 
implication, ask that we may have grace earnestly and 
honestly to inquire, in all the channels through which 
it is to come to us, What His wishes are, and what 
He would have us His children do ? So did Paul in 
the first agony of his conversion. " Lord, what would- 
est thou have me to do ?" Conscience then will be 
cherished, and kept not as a tarnished but as a bur- 
nished mirror, that it may more clearly reflect the light 
and images cast upon it. Scripture will be pondered, 
habitually and prayerfully and practically. And as 
none of these petitions are isolated and selfish, but 
grasp our brother's needs as well as our own — to pray 
that God's will may be known, is virtually to implore 
that the two Testaments of Revelation, the Old pro- 



88 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

claimed by the prophets of the Saviour, and the New 
by the apostles of the Saviour, may be diffused abroad. 
It is to pledge ourselves at the mercy-seat, that the 
prayers we offer shall be accompanied by plans and 
alms, and efforts for the translation and dispersion of 
these Scriptures among the whole brotherhood of our 
race 

It is, again, a prayer explicitly that the will, being 
once and in any way, — by reading or hearing, by con- 
science or Scripture, or by the ministrations of the 
nursery, of the Sabbath-school or the pulpit, — made 
known, it may be done by us. It is thus a prayer, 
that Grod would give us the grace of obedience in ac- 
tion, that our lives and words and thoughts may prac- 
tically carry out His law and exemplify His gospel. 
And yet, how far is this from being the aspect of the 
world. Each forgetting that the will of our Maker is 
from the moment of creation necessarily and inevitably 
the law of our happiness and usefulness, — we are sett- 
ing up instead of this our own wills, — selfish — and vari- 
able — and evil — and ruinous. With no one paramount 
law amongst us, when we have once swerved from the 
One wise and good and harmonious Will of our Maker, 
the whole scene of human history presents but a con- 
flict of clashing wills, a hurtling together of surcharged 
thunder clouds, Each would have his wishes law to 
his neighbor, and would thrust his own interests and 
tastes above those of all dependent upon him. Hence, 
discord, and tyranny, and murderous hate ; and hence, 
as James argues, " wars and fightings among you." 
When the apostle was on his voyage to Rome, the vessel 



LECTURE IV. 



Sh 



in which he was embarked fell " into a place where 
two seas met," and " the hinder part was broken by 
the violence of the waves."* Look off upon the trou- 
bled waters of society ; and why the violence of the 
world, and whence its wrecks, but because the ever- 
varying and mutually opposing currents of selfish in- 
fluences make here, as Paul found in the Adriatic, 
" cross seas ?" And remember, again, the inveterate 
subtlety of some wily and mighty men, compelling 
others to subserve their iron and remorseless will. 
And remember the keener cunning and fiercer wrath 
of him who has been a murderer of man from the be- 
ginning. See him leading men by his arts " captive 
at his will;" and knowing, as from (rod's word you 
do, the settled contrariety of that demon will to holi- 
ness, to happiness, and to Heaven, do you not see how 
human tyranny and Satanic, flinging up as they do 
their maddened billows ever against the course and 
current of obedience to the Divine will, you need skil- 
ful pilotage, and a true compass, keenly eyed, and a 
helm vigorously grasped, if you would ride these coun- 
ter currents, and " do the will of your Father in 
Heaven" and plough with upright keel your steady 
path to the port of rest ? Yes, nature must be re- 
newed within you, to obey. God must be implored 
by His Spirit " to work" in you " both to will and to 
do" And do you not see why the apostle prayed for 
the Colossi ans ceaselessly, " that they might be filled 
with the knowledge of God\s will;"! and why Epa- 
phras their minister is represented, in the same epis 
* Acts xxvii. 41. t OoL "• & 



90 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

tie, as making his fervent and laborious intercession, 
that they might ■" be complete in all the will of 
God."* 

3. But though obedience in action be required, it is 
not the sole meaning of the petition. Obedience 
must be shown in suffering as well as in toiling 
And the obedience of suffering submits itself not only 
to the Will of (rod's command, as requiring us to en- 
counter all sacrifices of reputation and interest and 
ease, that obedience to his precepts may occasion us ; 
but it subjects itself also, to the Will of (rod's con- 
trol, to His Sovereign and inscrutable Providence, 
which orders all events and overrules even the wicked- 
ness and wrath of man and of devils, for the accom- 
plishment of its own wise purposes. Man's wrongs 
against us, the tongue of Shimei, and the rumor of 
Grashmu, and the plot of Ahithophel, may thus be 
felt in their true character, and may, within proper 
limits, be resisted as wrongs against us; and yet, 
beyond and above these limits, we may, with the 
Psalmist of old, look on the wicked as but the sword 
whom Grod wields, or as the prophet represents the 
Assyrian oppressor of Israel, a staff and an axe which 
the Most High lifts up and brings down — shaped for 
His purposes and only laid aside when He pleases. 
As the imperfect and erring, we need chastisement ; 
as the inhabitants of a scene of allurement, we need 
restraint and discipline. Hence, Grod sends affliction ; 
and whom he loveth, he chasteneth, although He does 
not willingl^ grieve the children of men. Thus, 
* Col. iv. 12. 



LECTURE IV. 91 

" He who knew what human hearts would prove, 
How slow to learn the dictates of His love, 
Called for a cloud to darken all their years, 
And said, ' Go spend them in the vale of tears.' " * 

And thus regarded, how to the experienced disciple 
does the overruling, though untraceable, will of His 
Father on High, become a theme of most exquisite 
delightfulness. He sees the most trivial incidents 
entering into the counsels of (rod's all-grasping gov- 
ernment. Is Kish to have his son made king of 
Israel ? The straying of his beasts, because they 
found the fence low or saw the herbage beyond it 
greener — the roving fancy of a brute herd — brings the 
youth to the prophet who is to crown him. The 
woman of Samaria needs, as is her daily wont, to fill 
the urn at the well, and her unconscious errand is to 
m£et in that memorable day, Salvation, incarnate in 
that Messiah, whom the world had for centuries been 
expecting. Zaccheus climbs the tree from curiosity ; 
the blind man sat by the wayside to intercept the 
passing traveller's gift ; the lame man is borne to the 
Grate Beautiful of the Temple, to win by the old 
spectacle of his distress the daily pittance of alms ; 
and for all these, the gospel is waiting, thus, to meet 
and bless them eternally. Nothing is petty in God's 
government. So too, how strange the chemistry of 
Heaven that, from evil, extracts its own good and 
blessed ends. How many and long-cherished, and 
murderous, must have been the grudgings of Joseph's 

* Cowper's Epistle to an Afflicted Lady in France. — GriKishaw'i 
Gaaper, vol. vii. p. 34. 



92 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

brethren against the lad with the coat of many colors ; 
but all their unbrotherly plot, and Reuben's lie, and. 
the Midianites' covetousness, — all are to prepare for the 
feeding of Jacob and his household in famine, and to 
make way for the wonders of the liberation of the 
nation of Israel from the house of bondage. Look at 
Pharaoh's obduracy and unblushing falsehood, as mir- 
acle after miracle wrests a fresh and larger promise 
from him in favor of the chosen tribes, to be afresh 
forfeited and falsified.* How daring his defiance of 
Jehovah, but Jehovah " sees the end from the begin- 
ning ;" and all this impenitence, so tantalizing and 
exasperating to the Hebrews, is but the foreground of 
the picture in whose dim distance are seen Egypt and 
her gods confounded, the Red Sea cleft, the fiery pil- 
lar, and the thundering Sinai, and the subdued and 
apportioned Canaan. Look at Groliath, and Saul, and 
Doeg, and Absalom, and Shimei — all mad against 
David's life ; but all tributary to his best interests. 
See, in the later times, the school of Gamaliel and 
the massacre of Stephen, and the letters of the High 
Priest,- — all fitting Saul of Tarsus to be a relentless 
persecutor, a ravening wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, 
as successful as he is savage in his quest of the lambs 
of Christ's sheepfold. — No, — man and Satan so meant 
it. But Grod otherwise disposed what man and fiend 
proposed. His Rabbinic learning is to write the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. His zeal in persecution is to 
seal the genuineness of his conversion, and to guard 
his humility. And when he becomes, by that won- 
drous counsel of grace, an apostle of the faith he had 



LECTURE IV. 



93 



once harried to the death, see the forty Jews banded 
with an oath that they would not touch food till he 
was slain. How atrocious their sin, and how inevi- 
table seems his fate ; but no — Grod intends to use these 
infuriated Jews and their conspiracy, as a part of the 
blessed counsel and scheme of Heaven to waft his 
servant to Rome, there to reach and evangelize the 
^household of Csesar, among whom Paul is to find 
trophies of the Cross under the very shadow of the 
imperial throne. The tempest of Jewish hate is a 
blast of life — a rushing gale of Heavenly influence 
to the Roman court and capital. Are you then 
bereaved, impoverished, persecuted, betrayed, and 
wronged ? See the examples of submissive acquies- 
cence set before you in the Scripture. We need scarce 
remind you of Aaron holding his peace when his sons 
were slain in their sins, — and Job, impoverished and 
stript, and taunted, — and Moses, insulted and refused 
by the thankless race he came to emancipate, — and 
Eli, bereaved of children who died as the fool dieth, 
— and David, threatened with a clinging household- 
curse, — and Hezekiah, told of approaching captivity, 
— but all yielding themselves meekly to the afflic- 
tive will of their Grod. Hear Stephen praying for 
his murderers, amid the showered stones that fall 
and bruise him; and Christ spending his last breath 
in intercession for his mockers and slaughterers ; how 
do they» teach us submission to Grod's appointments, 
and to his sovereign control, as able to neutralize and 
counteract even the most wicked actions of the most 
wicked of beings. 



94 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

II. But, surely, all this love of obedience in action 
and obedience in suffering, this quiet trust in God's 
commanding and revealed ivill, and .this meek resig- 
nation to God's mysterious and controlling will, yet 
but dimly revealed, are not learned, easily and best, on 
earth. No. It is above, that we find our true stand : 
ard. The child, as the bark wafts it away, thinks 
that the shore rather than the ship is moving. The olff 
astronomy supposed our globe stationary, and the sun 
revolving around it. But further knowledge shows 
the child, that it is the ship, not the steadfast land that 
is changing place ; and the astronomer demonstrates, 
that it is our globe which is shifting from moment to 
moment its position in the sky, and swimming its 
swift way through fields of ether. Now, in morals 
men are like children, finding their fixed and station 
ary point, where it really is not. They think earth to 
be the standard, but it is in fact Heaven that should 
be so. Man instinctively looks toward a life beyond 
the grave, and catches at the intimations, more or less 
clear, which he has of a Heaven. But the heart, left 
unregenerate, is prone by its fallen nature, to make 
that Paradise in the likeness of our sinful earth, in- 
stead of endeavoring to renew our sinful Earth into 
the likeness of an unfallen and celestial Paradise. So 
the Pagan — so the Mohammedan — so the Swedenbor- 
gian, — all invest their imaginary heavens with the im- 
perfection and sins of this sinning world erf ours ; — » 
projecting the carnality and worldliness of this dark 
and evil earth into the land of holiness, and light, and 
bliss When to John, the last surviving apostle, in 



LECTUREIV. 95 

the isle of Patmos, the veil of the eterna world is up- 
lifted, look in. Are they the Elysian fields of Pagan 
bards, where Mercury thieves and Jupiter quarrels ? 
Are these the Houris of the Arabian impostor, that flit 
before the gaze ? Are they the cities, and trades, and^ 
domestic bickerings, and theological debates of the 
frenzied Swede, that are displayed ? The gospel does 
with the moral heavens what science has already done 
with the physical. It reverses this process of earth. 
It makes the other world the fixed point — -the stand- 
ard — and this the moveable point, needing revolution 
and change to bring it out of its present disastrous 
eclipse. The better and more blessed orb is made the 
model of imitation and emulation to the more wretched 
and the more wicked one. As do angels and just men 
on high our Father's will, so should we, on earth, 
strive to know, and knowing to obey it. There is in 
human nature a tendency to idolatry of higher na- 
tures, that manifested itself early in the christian 
church, in a Worship of these angels thus set before 
us. It is but " will- worship," as Paul calls it, or a 
deification of idols which our own selfish and wayward 
" will" has installed or invented. Loyola, fired by 
the perusal, in his slow convalescence, of the Lives of 
the Saints, as he might have been by the romances 
of chivalry, is but a development of the principle of 
idolizing emulation that glows in us all. But the 
Scripture teaches us not the worship of saints departed, 
and angels. It bids us, in memory and imagination, 
consort with these last, as already our attendants and 
ministers, and as soon to be our eternal companions ; 



96 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

but it reminds us, that like us, their duty and theii 
delight is obedience to our common Father and Lord. 
They are our " fellow-servants." They ask our sym- 
pathy and co-operation ; but they loathe and abjure 
our allegiance and adoration, if transferred from, their 
God to themselves. Their service should instruct and 
mould ours, into the resemblance of its cheerfulness and 
promptitude. They are swift to assume the tasks en- 
joined. No pause of sullenness or misgiving suspends 
their obedience to the command once known. Their 
obedience is universal. It does not shew, what God 
in his earthly church condemns, " partiality" in His 
law, — a preference for certain portions, and a neglect 
of others ; a cheapening of the demands of the law, a 
Pharisaic selection of the lesser and oblivion of the 
greater matters of that law; but they "have respect 
to all his commandments," and assay undivided hom- 
age and conformity. Theirs is a harmonious obedi- 
ence. As the dying Hooker said joyfully, that he was 
going from a world of confusion to one of order, so we 
do well to remember, how each votary in Heaven fills 
his place, and envies not nor jostles his brother, his co- 
heir in bliss, and his fellow-helper in duty. They are 
lowly, and clothed with humility amid their majesty. 
The offices which we should scorn as menial, and 
unbefitting to our dignity, the highest angels would 
accept, if Grod appointed them, without hesitation or 
regret. It was the pithy saying of John Newton, the 
friend of Cowper, that should two angels receive at 
the same time their commission from Heaven, the one 
to be the prime minister of an empire, and the other 



LECTURE IV. 97 

to sweep the streets of its capital, it would be a mat- 
ter of entire indifference to each of the two delighted 
messengers of God's will, which service fell to his lot> 
the post of the scavenger or that of the premier. They 
formed a chariot and coursers of fire for the hair-clad 
prophet of Israel ; and Ezekiel saw others of them as 
wheels with many eyes, intelligent and observant, yet 
subject in lowly contentment to all the appointments 
of their sovereign and God. Their motives, again, are 
pure; and theirs is unclouded serenity and singleness 
of intention, aiming e r er and only at the glory of God. 
Theirs is unwearied perseverance, and day and night 
they cease not to renew their adoration and continue 
their unfaltering anthem of rapt love. As Baxter de- 
scribes them, they obey " understandingly, sincerely, 
fully, readily, delightfully, unweariedly, and concord- 
antly ;"* or as his learned and devout contemporary 
and friend, Archbishop Ussher represents them, " will- 
ingly, speedily, sincerely, fully, and constantly."! 
They count not their palms and glorious plumage 
soiled in uplifting to his long-sought home above, the 
beggar Lazarus, because the dust had been his couch ; 
and they visit, without disgust or delay, the meanest 
hut and the most wretched pallet where an heir of 
their Father is drawing his latest breath ; nor alms- 
house, nor dungeon, nor cross, nor pillory seems too 
debased for their access, if Christ's servant be meekly 
suffering there. 

2. But beside angels, let us think of those who 

* Baxters Poor Man's Family Book, 
f Ussher's Body of Divinity, p. 437. 

5 



98 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 



were like us sinners once^ on earth. Now they, be 
fore the throne, know no more the dissensions, and 
errors, and sectarian badges, and rival interests of 
earth. A long and bright cloud of witnesses, each 
star differing from its fellow in glory, they form a 
galaxy resplendent and pure ; but it lies, every star 
of it, in the one line and pathway of obedience to the 
Divine Will. Even whilst yet on earth, the Spirit of 
Revelatiou brought Paul to call the will of Grod " thai 
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of Grod."^ But 
now more fully than ever before, he and each one of 
his radiant fellow-citizens sees the will and law of 
Heaven such ; — good in its authorship — good in its 
own inherent character— and good in its effects and 
severest sanctions on all ranks of creation ; — accept- 
able to the All- wise God, esteemed and rewarded of 
Him — and deserving to be acceptable to all like- 
minded with Him ; and perfect, lacking no precept re- 
quisite to its symmetry, overlooking no incident, rating 
wrongly no agency and no action, and showing nought 
redundant and exaggerated, nought deficient and ab- 
sent, neither an excrescence nor a blemish, in all its 
scheme and plan of moral beauty. 

But it may be asked, when I am thus enjoined to 
make just men now made perfect and sinless, and un- 
fallen seraphs my models in obedience and conformity 
to the Divine Will, am I not virtually taught that sin- 
less perfection is attainable in this mortal life ? Cer- 
tainly not, in the face of other plain declarations of 
Holy Writ, that if any man say he have no sin he 
* Rom. xii. 2. 



, LECTURE IV. 93 

aeceiveth himself; and when, too, a similar command 
is left us as to Grod himself: u Be ye holy for I am 
holy," and, " that ye may be perfect as your Father 
in Heaven is perfect." Now, none can expect to at- 
tain the perfection of God, though it is thus, in a cer- 
tain sense, the standard of the law of their endeavors. 
And if the standard do not imply full attainment in 
one case, why in the other ? 

3. But beyond this present life, we suppose this 
petition to have an amplitude of meaning that sweeps 
the millennial glories and the Judgment Day and 
Eternity, in its themes of supplication. To ask the 
conformity of Earth to Heaven, — to implore of the 
universal Sovereign that He will carry out an Act of 
Moral Uniformity, for assimilating this revolted prov- 
ince to the loyal portions of his Empire, — is to ask, 
that, in the fulness of His own times, all the visions of 
prophecy may find their accomplishment, and all the 
long and dark mysteries of Providence their solution 
and triumphant consummation. The Christian's life 
on earth is one long, protracted pupilage of unlearn- 
ing His own will as blind, and chaotic, and anarchical, 
and ruinous. He sees that his course, when self- 
willed, was that of the wild beast, as the prophet 
paints her in the wilderness, a swift dromedary, " tra- 
versing her ways," — that his wishes have been vari- 
able and contradictory, a path crossing and cutting 
itself, until it became a knot and maze without clue 
or goal. The world count it heroic in the young 
Casabianca, in the battle of Trafalgar, to have held, 
a f his father's command, his place immovably on the 



100 THE LORD S PRAYER. 

deck of the battle-ship, though he knew it about to 
explode. Surely there is truer dignity in the Chris- 
tian, determined at all risks to obey Grod rather than 
man, and to keep to the last the post of Duty, as the 
post of Glory and Bliss. Contrast with the believer's 
course, unrepining and persevering to the end, the 
career of the world's desperate martyrs. On the 
suicide's tomb you may write, " (tod's will was not 
mine." "What He appointed I could not abide, I 
spurned His rod, and flung up His gifts. What He 
bestowed I did not deem worth accepting. The 
Christian, in another school, has learned that the 
crowning dignity and felicity of his nature, is to have 
his will sweetly melted into that of his Grod, and that 
his bark careers safely through sunlight and through 
storms, with his Father at the helm. And with his 
standard of comparison habitually derived from a 
higher and purer clime, how is the disciple of Jesus 
both furnished with the means of reaching a higher 
moral elevation than the worldly man, and of preserv- 
ing at the same time a habitual lowliness, that the 
contemplation of inferior and terrestrial models could 
not maintain in him ; and how does he also, in Grod's 
will for his law, and Grod's love for his motive, and 
God's Heaven for his measure of appreciation, and 
his home of attraction, find an unspent spring of 
energy, an unbroken elasticity of principle, that 
nought else can minister ? 

In the last book of Revelation we are told that only 
those " who do his commandments have a right to tht 
tree of life, and to enter in through the gates into the 



LECTURE IV. 101 

city." # Let us, like Augustine, pray of God to write 
within us His law, and put within our souls His love 
Thus Lord, — " G-ive what Thou commandest, and then 
command what Thou wilt."")* 

1. Are we tempted to murmur at the want of im- 
mediate fruit from our efforts, and yearn for the in- 
stant fulfilment of the prayer and of the promise on 
which the petition is based, let us remember our an- 
gelic partners in service and our celestial patterns of 
obedience. Is the turf stubborn, are the weeds hardy, 
and the harvest slow? Still plough, and sow, and 
tend. Is the heat and burden of your day, as you 
think, of more than ordinary intensity and heaviness ? 
Think you, that those of the angelic bands, who, 
eighteen hundred years ago, announced over the fields 
of Bethlehem, ' Grlory to God and good- will to man,' 
in the kingdom of the Prince there born into the 
world, are yet faint and discouraged, because through 
eighteen centuries so many of mankind have shown 
only ill-will to the gospel and denied glory to its 
Author and (rod ? No ; they have seen hypocrisy 
and heresy in the nominal church. They have seen 
the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and Antichrist, and 
the caviller, and the atheist, — all apostasies and all 
scandals. They have seen Julian, endeavoring to re- 
build for the Jew his temple at Jerusalem, in order 
to falsify Christ's prophesies ; and Voltaire and Paine 
forging refutations of the gospel. They have seen the 
Waldensian martyrs rolled down their rocky heights, 
and heard the cry of the blood of the innocent, as it 
* Rev. xxii. 14. f " Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis" 



102 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

exclaimed, " How long?" But through all this mist 
and maze of wickedness, they have seen soaring 
quietly and steadily heavenward, the kingdom and 
throne of Christ. Let us hope on and toil on ; and 
let us serve and trust Grod as they do, — our wiser and 
better and more far-seeing coadjutors. Their white 
pinions are over us. Heaven and Destiny are with us. 
2. Are we, on the other hand, yet strangers and 
enemies to Grod, our forgetfulness and disobedience 
cannot wrench the world from its moral dependence, 
more than the tiny hand of your child can untwine 
the bands of gravitation that link your planet to the 
Sun and the Solar system. As said the manifested 
Jehovah of old to the refractory patriarch Job, — 
" Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, 
or loose the bands of Orion ?" # You are, in the pur- 
pose and revealed and unrevealed will of God, — in 
the will of command which Scripture has already un- 
veiled, and in the will of control which Providence is 
slowly to unveil hereafter, — you are by dependence, 
and by duty, and by destiny, a creature and a subject 
of God. Could you repeal His statute of subjection 
to Him, you would virtually forfeit your right to con- 
trol or use any of His subordinate creatures, in the 
keeping of them subject to you. His air, when you 
had once thrown off the government of Him its 
Maker, might refuse to fill your lungs, — His earth, to 
bear your tread — His light, to beam on your path — 
His waters, to quench your thirst — His fires, to warm 
your shivering limbs — and His food, to supply any 
* Job xxxviii. 31. 



LECTURE IV. 



10S 



longer the strength which you used only in rebelling 
against the common Lord and Proprietor of the "Uni- 
verse. If you quarrel with your host and his living 
and habitation, by what right do you use them any 
longer ? "Whilst contending against Grod, all your 
mercies — friends, home, freedom, books, wealth, — are 
forfeited mercies. The stars in their courses were 
said by the Hebrew prophetess to have fought against 
Sisera, the Lord's enemy ; and soon, if you are the 
enemy of Christ, sun, moon, and stars, — day and 
night, — summer and winter, — angels and men, — and 
years and ages, — all worlds and all beings, — will be 
found embattled against you ; and the wide universe, 
its rocks and its hills, its trackless fields, its forests, 
its mountain caves, and its fathomless abysses, will 
afford you no nook to shelter you from the wrath of 
the Lamb. His will must be done in the destruction 
of the sinner, and in the salvation of the believer.- 
The prayer is nailed as an edict to the Throne of 
Almightiness. Will you obey, or must you confront 
that will ? — Will you become its victim or its wor 
shipper ? 



u §'m m tjiis kit m kih} toul" 



LECTURE V. 

" <§'m w tljts kq mtr iailtj hrafr." 

Matthew, vl 11 

How majestic is the imagery of Scripture, when I 
presents to us our Maker and Grod, as feeding all the 
orders of his animate creation, and ministering contin- 
ually what they as constantly need, for the sustentation 
of the life which He has bestowed upon them. " The 
eyes of all wait upon 'Thee, and Thou givest them 
their meat in due season : Thou openest Thine hand 
and satisfiest the desire of every living thing."* " He 
giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens 
which cry."t The sea-gull winnowing the salt and 
wintry air along our coasts ; the petrel twittering in 
the storm over the far blue waves of mid-ocean ; and 
all the tribes that cleave the air, or traverse the deep 
paths of the seas, or rove our earth, look up to His 
daily vigilance and bounty, under the pressure of their 
daily necessities. To Him the roaring of the beast, 
and the chirping of the bird, and the buzzing of the 
insect, are but one vast symphony of supplication from 

* Psalm cxlv. 15, 16. f Psal* 11 cxlvii. 9. 



108 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the hosts which he feeds. To His capacious garners 
their successive generations have resorted, and yet 
those stores are not spent ; neither has the Heavenly 
Provider failed in his resources, nor have the expectant 
pensioners been left to famish. 

To God, in this aspect of His government, the prayer 
now brings us. All the petitions which precede, and 
which compose the earlier half of the Lord's Prayer, 
respect the end for which man lives ;— the glory, do- 
minion, and service of his Creator.* The later peti- 
tions, of which that before us is the opening one, and 
together making the latter half of the prayer, have 
reference to the means by which we live ; the body by 
means of God's supplies of food ; the soul by means 
of the pardon for sin, by the victory over temptation, 
and by the escape from evil in all its forms and all its 
degrees, which we implore and which God bestows. 

Of the two portions into which the whole prayer 
thus resolves itself, the first half, beginning with the 
Father's throne in Heaven, comes down, by the steps 
of its several petitions, to man, as the servant of his 
Father on the earth. " Thy will be done in Earth as it 
is in Heaven." The second portion commences with 
man and his lower and corporeal needs on earth, and 
climbs upward, on its returning way to the skies, 
through supplications that respect, first, man's bodily, 
and then his spiritual wants, and implore his deliverance 
from all present and eternal evil. The Prayer becomes 
thus like an endless chain in our wells. Beginning in 
Heaven and reaching Earth, and then returning to 
Heaven again, it is seen binding together the throne 



LECTURE V. 109 

and the footstool — God the sovereign and man the de- 
pendant. But, in the well, the reservoir is below. In 
the government of (rod the reservoir is above. It is the 
upper deep of (rod's mercy and grace in Jesus Christ. 
There are some interpreters who would look upon the 
petition of our text as figurative, and as if referring 
only to the soul ; as though bodily wants had no right to 
appear in a form of supplication indited by Christ. So 
Luther at one time interpreted it, as a request to be 
fed upon the Bread of Heaven. But the Saviour, who 
gave bread to the multitudes by miracle, and who at 
other times hungered for it himself, and who blessed 
it, when partaken by himself and his disciples, was 
not certainly degrading either himself or us, in teach- 
ing us here to ask for bread, in its literal and material 
sense. The (rod who made the body, shall He scorn 
to feed it ? The Redeemer who is to provide in the 
grave for the guardianship and resurrection of the 
earthly tabernacle, shall He make no provision for that 
body ere it goes down to darkness and corruption — that 
body which is made the temple of the Holy Spirit? 
We have no sympathy with the materialism that re- 
members the body only. As well might the bird ab- 
jure the wings God gave 'it, and the skies which he 
formed it to traverse, as man renounce his spiritual 
nature and internal longings ; and forget the eternity 
for which that nature is destined. But if we would 
not, on the one hand, be materialists ; so, on the other 
hand, as little can we sympathize with the mistaken 
spiritualism which takes no thought for the body, 
" not having it in any honor." When Paul predicted 



110 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the " will-worship" of an apostate church, in his letter 
to the Colossi ans, he described it as " neglecting the 
body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh." 1 * 
True piety is not an exile from the home and the farm, 
the workshop and the market, and the court-house. 
If a man is religious, his religion will be with him at 
the board and by the way, in the earning of his bread 
and in the eating of it. Primitive disciples were dis- 
tinguished for partaking it " with singleness of heart 
and gladness." Godliness " hath promise of the life 
that now is" and is to make pure, and blest, and use- 
ful the Christian's eating and drinking, even, that this 
and whatever else he does on earth, may be done to 
the glory of Christ ; and, as objects in themselves of 
little worth become valuable when enshrined in am- 
ber, so piety gives a peculiar incrustation of holiness 
and sweetness to the details of every-day life. In this 
most comprehensive petition of our text, we ask of 
Grod, then, our bread. In that brief sentence we 

I. Confess our dependence. We ask Him, to give it. 

II. We pledge our sympathy. We pray not, self- 
ishly and solitarily, but for our fellows, the needy 
around. We do not say : Give me my portion ; and 
let this man ask his for himself; what is that to me? 
But in large and brotherly tenderness, we go, each for 
all ; " Give us our daily bread." 

III. And lastly, we promise by implication modera- 
tion and contentment. We ask not the food of years, 
nor do we implore dainties and banquets ; but in sim- 
plicity we request " this day our daily bread." 

* Col. ii. 23. 



LECTURE V. Ill 

Dependence, Sympathy, and Moderation, all are then 
implied in this sentence. 

I. We easily forget, and yet how unreasonably, our 
personal and constant dependence on Grod. We can 
see how the poor widow, whose barrel of meal has 
failed, and whose cruse of oil is spent, should and can 
ask thus humbly and urgently the day's provender ; 
but it seems strange to us at first, that such a petition 
should suit as well the rich, — the owner of houses and 
farms and bank-stock, — the man whose garners con- 
tain food that would supply bread for myriads of 
mouths, besides his own, and this not for to-day only, 
but for years hence — the merchant, it may be, whose 
groaning warehouses would victual whole navies. We 
can see how David might, naturally and most urgently, 
offer such a prayer as is our text, on the day when he 
and his soldiers were hungering and the shew-bread 
was given them ; but how Solomon his son could use 
it, when his purveyors sent him, month by month, 
such profuse supplies for his table and palace, seems 
not so easy to be understood. And yet this very lan- 
guage would equally suit both,— the hunger-bitten 
father in the day of his want, and the luxurious son 
in the season of his imperial opulence. Job in his 
palmy days, when he was the richest of all the men of 
the East, and when his sons were feasting each in his 
own house ; and Joseph, when opening the granaries 
of Egypt, where he had laid up the food of seven plen- 
teous years, for an entire nation — each needed the 
spirit, if not the terms, of this prayer: and we doubt 
not each was wont to sit down to his own well-stored 



112 THE LORD S PRAYER. 

board in the temper, dependent and grateful, which is 
inculcated by this very prayer. Do not the rich de- 
pend ? Let an incensed and forgotten God send but a 
horde of his insect ravagers into the garners of wealth 
and pride, and how soon, and how surely, is all their 
accumulated abundance converted into rottenness, 
Let him allow their tried sagacity to be at fault, and 
how easily one rash speculation sweeps off, as with 
the besom of destruction, the gains of a life-time, and 
writes them bankrupt and penniless. 

A man may be proud of his industry, and economy, 
and skill ; a nation may exult over their enterprise 
and energy ; but are not these, or the qualities that 
win bread, and win it abundantly, themselves gifts of 
Heaven? " Is it not He that giveth thee power to 
get wealth ?" The statesman or political economist, 
who overlooks this palpable truth, has little reason to 
boast of his discernment. All the praise of a man or 
of a measure, — of a political leader, or of a party and 
its policy, — that stops short of Grod, is like the stolid- 
ity of the heathen fisherman represented in Scripture 
as burning incense to his net and drag. Is it not He, 
that bestowed all the material constituents of wealth, 
the ores and gems hid in the recesses of the earth, as 
well as the harvests reaped from its fields ; and is it 
not His Providence that discovers to man, in the fitting 
age and hour, the treasures of Nature, and suggests 
all the inventions of Art ? If He be forgotten or de- 
fied ; it is but for Him to speak, and the blight on the 
wheat, or the blasting of the root on which a whole 
people feeds, shall send famine, and perhaps pestilence 



LECTURE V. 113 

through all its borders ; or leaving to a nation these 
stores, he may curse them, and our abundance pam- 
pers our sensuality and poisons our virtues. He who 
of old guided the flight of the quails over the tents of 
the chosen tribes in the wilderness, is not He, the 
same in skill, yet guiding the crowds of the fisher- 
men's finny spoil, beneath or far aside from their barks ? 
Can the trapper of the Rocky Mountains, or the har- 
pooner of the Pacific Ocean succeed, but as (rod main- 
tains and guides their chosen prey ? The Puritan 
fathers when they eked out the scanty supplies of 
their first years with the shell-fish of our coasts, and 
blest (rod for showing them the " treasures," as they 
beautifully quoted the Scripture, " hid in the sand," 
were setting a lesson of pious acknowledgment, which 
their children in our days would do well to remember, 
when sifting other, and perhaps far more baleful 
treasures out of the golden sands of California. 

Does a parent, or husband, or child, spread with 
care and bounty your board ? Who gave to you that 
relative, and sustains in him health and life, keeps alive 
towards yourself that kinsman's kindly feelings, and 
blesses his diligence with success ; — if it be not Grod ? 
For the industry of ourselves or others that earned 
this day's meal, or the bounty of our fellow-men that 
ministered it, — for the health that relished it, and the 
strength which it upheld, we each of us owed God 
thanks with each repast we have this day partaken. 
And to tighten our sense of obligation — to encircle, 
as by frequent repetition of the bonds, our hearts more 
habitually with His love — Grod would have our recog- 



114 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

nition of it daily ; and as each day He supplies our re- 
past, so we each day should convert it, by truest devo- 
tion and gratitude, into a thank-offering to Him our 
most gracious Father. 

But it may be said : We incurred weakness and 
anxiety, wasting toil and corroding care, and immi- 
nent peril even, to earn for ourselves and our babes 
our frugal portion ; if God is to be called the Griver, 
why should He not bestow it without fatigue, instead 
of selling it, as it were, to our hard labor ? We an- 
swer : The sweat of his brow, in which man, after 
the fall, was commanded to eat his bread, is itself a 
blessing. Toil hedges him in with protection from a 
thousand fatal temptations. By these very snares,., 
those of more fertile lands, and of more luxurious 
climes, and of larger inheritances, are seen to fall con- 
tinually an easy and unresisting prey. Plenty with- 
out toil, is more often a curse than a gift, and we fear 
thousands of those who now yearn and haste to be 
rich, with little cost of time or labor, will find it so, 
not in this world only, but in the next as well. It has 
been the more rugged and niggard soil of the North 
that has reared the nobler races ; whilst the sunny 
South, on her lap of exuberance, has too often dandled 
but the feeble and the luxurious, the thriftless, the 
inert, and the vicious. The sands of Arabia, in their 
glaring barrenness, have helped Ishmael's sons to pre- 
serve their centuries of independence and their manly 
vigor, notwithstanding their torrid climate. (rod 
really gives when requiring us to toil for His gift. He 
doubles in fact the gift, by bestowing not only the 



LECTURE V. 115 

food, but increased vigor of body and mind in the pro- 
cess of winning it. 

II. It was sait J j that the terms of the text pledged 
us to brotherly sympathy. And how many need 
this ? 

The Bread Question, as it was called in Britain, 
became one of the gravest and most pressing that tried 
modern statesmanship. Pauperism must be, and 
should be fed ; but how ? Catholicism taunts Protes- 
tantism with the pauperism of England, as if it were 
chargeable on the rejection of the Roman faith. But 
in answer to this, it is sufficient to say, that the pau- 
perism of British countries is found mainly in the class 
who are not church-goers. The artisan and plough- 
man, who have become imbruted and sceptical, who 
keep no Sabbath, and read no Bible, and never enter 
the sanctuary, are in Protestant England, the chief 
burdens on the Poor Fund. Those who visit the Sab- 
bath-school, and the chapel, or the church, both in the 
mining and manufacturing districts, are less griev- 
ously and less often the victims of want. But in 
Catholic countries, it is the church-going, — those whc 
haunt the porch and the altar, and the confessional, 
and keep the church-holidays, that are the most 
shameless and importunate in their mendicancy. The 
poor of the Protestant countries are by their religion 
kept mainly from the worst woes and vices of the pau- 
perism around them, which preys mainly on the re- 
jecters or neglecters of their religion. But the poor 
of Catholic countries are made such and kept such by 
their faith ; by its festivals, fostering idleness; by the 



116 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

mendicancy of many of its religious orders of Friars, 
and by the mortmain engrossment of large portions of 
the nation's soil, and the nation's resources, in the sup- 
port of monastic establishments, which consume but 
do not produce. 

Again, the pauperism of Protestant England is not 
either as deep or deplorable as that of Catholic Ireland ; 
nor that of the Protestant cantons in Switzerland like 
that of Catholic Savoy. We say this but in passing, 
and in reply to an unjust impeachment which the Ro- 
man Catholic often brings. 

But wherever population has become dense, and 
labor difficult to be obtained, pauperism has grown into 
a formidable evil. It is in many lands the great ques- 
tion of the times. The gaunt and hollow-eyed clan of 
the " Wants" are confronting the more sleek, but the 
less numerous, and the feebler house of the " Haves." 
Shall the sinewy grasp of Famine's bony hand be laid 
on the pampered throat of Luxury, and a violent social 
revolution assay to right for a time the dread inequal- 
ity ? We believe that to the lands which know not 
or scorn the gospel, there are few enemies which they 
have more cause to fear, than this famishing multi- 
tude — fierce, unrestrained, and illiterate — a Lazarus 
without a gospel and without a Grod, turning wolf- 
like in the blindness of its misery, and its brute 
strength, on a Dives without conscience and without 
mercy. 

The poor must be relieved, but not in indolence. 
That gospel which is so eminently a message for the 
poor, yet declares, that, if any man will not work 



LECTURE V. 117 

neither shall he eat. Society must not overlook her 
destitute children, but she must not nurse and fatten 
them in sloth. If on the other hand, she undertake 
to supply and direct all their labor, she would restrain 
rather than foster enterprise and industry If she 
compei work, she must have despotic powers to ex- 
tort it. If she resolutely cling to free institutions, and 
reject despotism, she must forego the compulsory 
requirement of the labor ; and, then, is it charity to 
bestow the unearned pay, and whilst the sluggard folds 
his arms, to thrust alms betwixt his teeth ? We do 
not see in Association or Social Revolution, or in any 
system of mere Political Legislation, the full remedy 
of this. The gospel must come in, and by its influ- 
ence on personal conscience and on individual char- 
acter, teach the poor self-respect, diligence, and econ- 
omy and content ; and require of the rich sympathy, 
and compassion, and bounty, for their more necessi- 
tous brethren. Christ is needed, not only as an Inter- 
preter and a Daysman betwixt man and (rod. He is 
needed also, in the daily business of the world, as a 
Daysman betwixt the several classes of society, that 
now eye each other askance, — each endeavoring to 
abridge its own duties, and exaggerating its demands 
upon the class opposed to itself. 

And ought the wealthy to forget ever the bonds of 
sympathy that bind them, amid their opulence and 
in their ceiled houses, and their elegant leisure, to the 
multitudes around ? Are they wealthy ? The poor 
man aided in building, storing, and sailing their argo- 
sies ; and in rearing and guarding their sumptuous 



118 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

abodes. The poor man takes, to protect their slum- 
bers, the watchman's dreary beat, and the fireman's 
noble risks. Every grain of sugar, and every lock of 
cotton, that passes through their warehouses, is the 
fruit of the labor of some other of the great house- 
hold, — their kindred and their duty to whom they 
may not justly disavow. The purple and fine linen 
passed through the poor man's hands at the loom and 
the vat ; and not an ornament or a comfort decks or 
gladdens them, in their persons or in their houses, on 
which the horny palm of Want has not at some time 
wearily rested. In one apartment, there have met 
the toils of the colliers of Northumberland, and of the 
potters of Staffordshire. Upon one and the same 
table, are grouped the offerings of the Mexican- miner 
and of the British cutler, of the Scottish weaver and 
the Irish cotter, of the tea -gatherer of " far Cathay," 
and of the whalefisher of their own Nantucket. " We 
are members one of another." "We cannot forget it 
with impunity. If each member, of the great brother- 
hood of the nations, were to come and claim back his 
contributions to our daily comforts ; how poor and 
forlorn should we be left. Our common Father would 
not have us overlook it, in the benefits it has brought, 
and in the bonds which it imposes. We owe much to 
our fellows ; and we owe more to Him. To Him,. the 
wealthiest capitalist who rules the exchanges of a 
nation, owes as much of hourly obligation, for life and 
food, and health and competence, as did Elijah tho 
prophet, in the sore famine, when Grod was feeding 
him by daily miracle at the brook, and ravens were 



LECTURE V. 119 

his purveyors, or in the house of the widow of Sarepta. 
Now, one mode of acknowledging gratefully our in- 
debtedness to God, is by the fraternal acknowledg- 
ment of obligation to our brethren, whom as His pen- 
sioners, He transfers to our care. 

The rich, then, are not entitled to be profuse and 
wasteful,— and thus, to empty the granaries, as it 
were, of many coming years and of many needy 
households, in selfish rioting and prodigality. We do 
not call for the enactment of sumptuary laws ; but 
we suppose Christianity to require of its individual 
disciples, that " their moderation should be known to 
all men." 

III. And, thus, we reach the third division of our 
theme. The petition intimates a daily lesson of con- 
tent and moderation. " Give us this day our daily 
bread." " Having food and raiment," says the apos- 
tle, " let us be therewith content" We ask not from 
our God luxuries, but necessaries. We come not with 
remote and far-reaching cares of the morrow, and of 
the following week and month, that may roll over our 
graves, — or of years which we may not be here to 
count ; but we stint our anxieties to the needs of the 
day that is passing over our heads. Could we but do 
this, and take each day, thought for the cares of the 
day; how much would the inevitable sorrows of life 
be lightened, and its many mercies enhanced and 
sweetened. Life's unwieldy loads would be, by this 
divine philosophy, carved into manageable portions, 
not too heavy ever for the jaded and peeled shoulders. 
It were our consolation and our support, if we could 



120 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

keep our anxieties within the hedge of the present 
day ; and if we thus bounded our desires and fears 
more closely. The covetous is not content with his 
own share ; but would have his neighbor's also, and 
not for one day but for many generations. If a fortune 
have been gained by working the poor at prices that 
but just kept their lips above the choke-damp of star- 
vation ; — or if, in the strong language of Scripture, 
we have been "grinding their faces" till the traces 
and lineaments of our common humanity were almost 
worn off them ; — what is a heritage, so won, better 
than the wealth of a pirate wrecker, composed of the 
broken and plundered barks of the voyagers whom he 
has lured to the shore, to batten on the fruits of their 
robbery and ruin. 

We sin, also, against the spirit of this petition by 
what the Scripture calls, " making haste to be rich. 1 ' 
The large and perilous speculation, — the eager and un- 
reflecting pursuit of gain, — have ruined more traders 
than they have enriched ; and some of the few thus 
enriched, have been made so, at the expense, there is 
reason to fear, of their conscience and their eternal 
salvation. It is the spirit of the gambler casting his 
bread, and, it may be, that of his children, and, it 
may be, that of his trusting employers, on the chances 
of the card or the turn of the die. 

2. The terms of the prayer teach moderation to the 
wealthy, as well as contentment to the less affluent. 
To ask daily bread was Barzillai's duty, amid all that 
splendid wealth which enabled him to feed David and 
his entire .army. So we, however wealthy, asking 



LECTURE V. 121 

daily bread, are not entitled to lavish, in gluttony and 
insane profusion, the bread of myriads for many years. 
One of the sins that called down from Heaven the 
terrific bolt of the first French Revolution, was that 
prodigal luxury of the nobility and court, which dared 
to run to all excesses of riot amid a famishing people, 
and with a bankrupt exchequer, — with the selfish 
cry : " After us, let there come the Deluge." It 
came for them. Fashion and Pride rob Charity. 
"When the Egyptian queen, to make a draught of un- 
paralleled costliness, melted a most precious pearl in 
her goblet, — and when in the days of Charles Y., a 
merchant-prince of Germany kindled a fire of cin- 
namon for his kingly guest, — the gem and the wood 
might well perhaps be spared, as far as referred to 
any immediate use which the poor could have made 
of them ; but if the price of them were so much de- 
ducted from what might have fed needy thousands, 
this destruction of value, for purposes of mere osten- 
tation, cannot certainly be regarded as being just. 
" Our superfluities," said Howard, " must give place 
to our brother's necessities." That maxim would 
replenish every poor fund and mission treasury under 
the cope of Heaven. 

3. Taken in its entire and unbroken continuity, this 
supplication rebukes the distrustful. Has not He who 
taught us, this day, to ask the day's supplies, else- 
where promised, that, as our day is so shall our 
strength be ? And does not the promise includ 
bread and the water as being made sure, which are to 
sustain that strength ? But the principle docs not pat* 



122 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

ronize, on the other hand, the indolent aud improvi- 
dent, who expect to be fed of Grod and man, without 
effort or care on their own part. It condemns waste 
on the one hand, and niggardliness on the other, — un- 
due care, and overmuch carefulness. It would not 
have its Marthas cumbered about much serving, nor 
would it allow its Peters to waste time and strength 
in dreaming idle dreams and building useless taber- 
nacles on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the glo- 
rious vision of the hour has now swept past, and whilst 
Duty and Need now call them to the valley below. 

4. It bears, as we have already seen, on the great 
social question of our times, which we have not here 
time or the fitting place thoroughly to discuss; the 
question, What are the dues of Property, and what 
the rights and remedies of Poverty ? The Bible does 
not denounce property, but it does denounce the Self- 
ishness that would gormandize at the hearth, while 
Poverty is starving at the gate ; and it condemns, as 
mockery, the piety that but utters kindly wishes and 
sings fluent Psalms, whilst a .hungry brother is dis- 
missed unfed. " How can the love of Gfod," asks the 
apostle, " abide in him," who thus wants the love of 
his brother? The " solidarity" of society and of the 
race, — the fact that mankind are one great body, — in 
another sense, however, than French infidelity teaches 
it/ — was already, centuries since, the teaching of the 
Bible. We are bound to each other, — the rich and 
the poor, — the educated and the ignorant, — the citizen 
and the tiller, — the employer and the workman,— the 
rude and the refined, — the heathen and the Christian, 



LECTURE V. 128 

—the native and the emigrant, — by ligaments and 
nerves and veins, that can be severed only by rending 
and depleting the arteries, and only by stopping the 
heart, and expelling the life of the body politic. 

5. Lastly, the text bears on our choice of a profes- 
sion, or a home, wherein to win and to eat our daily 
bread. If we look for God to give it, we must not re- 
sort to methods which a holy Grod cannot bless. We 
may not ask Jehovah, as do Hindoos their gods, to 
patronize theft, or fraud, or murder. The priests of 
Jeroboam, intruding, against (rod's laws, into a holy 
office for the piece of bread which it brought, were sin- 
ners in thus seeking their food. Christ our Lord, when 
needing bread to stay his own sore and long-protracted 
hunger, would not sin against His Father's will and 
work an unseasonable miracle, that He might obtain 
that bread so needful and so strongly coveted. "We 
are not entitled to resort to criminal pursuits, what- 
ever the stress of our wants. The British manufac- 
turers, who, to win filthy lucre, have cast brazen idols 
for the Hindoo market, are worse, because more en- 
lightened, than the shrine-makers of Diana of Ephe- 
sus, and have sinned most fearfully against that gos- 
pel, which is the glory and bulwark of their land, by 
thus pandering for gain to the idolatry which Heaven 
so detests. Is the opium-trade of Britain and Amer- 
ica to China more innocent ? Or, shall we defend the 
traffic of the man who amongst us, in the dram-shop, 
puts the bottle to his neighbor's mouth ? Can these 
ask or expect the blessing of God on their daily bread, 
who win it by wrong, by pandering to the evil pas- 



124 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

sions of their fellows, — and by the ruin of innocence 
and inexperience, — by the distortion of truth, and the 
diffusion of known slander and falsehood ? The wicked 
excuse themselves with the plea, " We must live." 
They would form the sentence . more perfectly, if thev 
would say, " We must live forever." And because 
we are to live, after death, in eternal woe or bliss, we 
cannot and must not, whilst we live here, disobey and 
defy God. And yet how many are there, in Christian 
lands, who are content to fish their foul bread out of 
the standing pools and the slimiest ooze of human de- 
pravity — who, dipping their daily morsel, as into the 
gangrenes and ulcers of the body politic, bequeath to 
their children the wages of wickedness, and the gain, 
that cost to many their peace of mind, and their char- 
acter, and their principles, and their hopes of Heaven. 
Do not authors and publishers owe it to themselves, 
that they should look narrowly to the character and 
influence of the literature which they aid in producing 
and diffusing? If a man's pen be his heritage, he 
may not make it into a picklock, or a poisoned sti- 
letto. Was there not, in the boast of Southey to By- 
ron that he, the laureate, had never, in his literary 
tasks, aided to manufacture furniture for the brothel, 
a noble claim, and higher honor than a peerage ; and 
yet, was it not more than can justly be claimed by all 
the book-makers and all the book-venders of our own 
country and city ? 

" A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things he possesseth." Such was Christ's philos- 
ophy. And, my fellow-immortal, are not conscience 



LECTURE V. 125 

and experience on the side of that saying ? Look 
round. Contrast the sinner, in abundance, but un- 
forgiven, —unchanged in heart, and impenitent, — in 
his trouble, in his bereavements, or in his death-scene, 
with the poor but pious man. Not cleansed in Christ's 
atoning blood, not born again of the renewing Spirit, 
how can the one be blest ? Beneath the threadbare 
and ill-shapen coat of the other, may beat a thankful 
heart. His frugal meal may be sanctified by earnest 
prayer, and made sweet to himself and fragrant to his 
Grod, by up-streaming gratitude. How glorious to him 
are life's mercies. The sunbeam shines from his 
Father's throne ; and the rain drops from his Father's 
hand : and how blessed and disciplinary to him are 
life's inevitable trials. His soul is safe. He has 
secured the " main chance" Who of you that loses 
his soul, has done that ? If you miss Paradise at the 
last, can you be called rich, though you inherit mines 
and empires ? It is the end that crowns the work, 
and decides the character. 

Are you young? Resolve, that you will not sell 
truth and conscience, or profane the Sabbath, or wrest 
justice, to win your food. Are you poor ? Seek to 
know Grod ; and poverty will be sanctified if not re- 
moved. And soon all the discomforts of the earth, 
which is but the inn and the highway, will be forgot- 
ten in the rest, and plenty, and gladness of the Fa- 
ther's heavenly mansions, the celestial home before you. 
Are you richly supplied with earthly good ? Make 
not it — so perishable a portion, held by so brief a ten- 
ure, your boast, your trust, your Heaven, and Christ, 



126 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

and all. Have you God for a father ? Serve him by 
generosity and brotherly sympathy; and let your alms, 
and prayers, and gentle kindness smooth the rugged- 
ness of the poor man's path, and cause the widow's 
heart to s'ing for joy. Are you desolate — and needy — 
and tempted ? — Do thy babes cry, and yet have not 
food ? Yet are not children a blessing ; and is not 
forgiven sin ; and is not the hope of Heaven, a bless- 
ing ? Does the selfishness of man threaten to freeze 
at times your outgushing sympathies ; and do the tri- 
als of Earth suggest murmurings against the justice 
of Heaven ? Banish the temptation, ere it coil itself 
into thy heart of hearts, empoisoning thy soul, and de- 
vouring there all peace and all trust. Banish the 
doubt. Crush its adder head against Christ's blessed 
promises, and on the steps of His mercy-seat, — where 
prayer is heard, and sorrow staunched, and grace con- 
ferred. See the sparrow fed without garners, and the 
lily clad, without an income ; — and shall He who 
hears the twittering of the one and furnishes the gar- 
niture of the other — shall He not, much more, clothe 
and feed you, ye of little faith ? 

Yes. He who gave His own Son to ransom us sin- 
ners, — how shall He not, with Him, freely give us all 
things ? And that Son, giving his flesh to be the life 
of the soul, and becoming to the regenerate believer 
the Bread of Heaven, — the true and spiritual manna, — 
how shall He forget or fail to meet all the lesser needs 
of His people, as they wrestle their militant way to 
His home and throne, — along the narrow path of his 
own tracing, and through the thronging tribulations of 



LECTURE V. 12? 

His own appointment and admeasurement ? — Heaven 
and Earth shall pass away, but one jot or tittle of His 
word shall never lack its accomplishment. Trust Him 
only, as to the season, and as to the mode of accom- 
plishing it. Both the time and the shape of the deliv- 
erance will be wisely, and it may be mysteriously 
selected : but surer than the shining of sun, moon and 
stars, is the truth of His covenant — is the safety of 
His people — is the final and entire vindication of aU 
His providential dispensations. 



" aui forgin* us nnr Mia as mb forgtitt nur tolitnra." 



LECTURE VI, 

" %nl fnrgi© m nx tohts m m fnrgk nx h\Am" 

Matthew, vi. 12 

" Give" and " Forgive:" such needs to be our pei- 
petual appeal to Heaven, long as we remain upon 
earth. The one is the cry of Want ; and the other of 
Guilt. In the petition which precedes this, we ap- 
proach the All-sustaining Sovereign as His needy pen- 
sioners, and ask the day's provender. But in that 
which forms now our text, we confess ourselves to be 
as well offenders as dependants, and culprits, who come 
deprecating the wrath and imploring the clemency of 
our Judge. And if the body need its daily recruital 
and supply of food, the soul, whilst it shall be pre- 
served within that body, and whilst yet inhabiting the 
earth, requires quite as much its constant renewals 
of pardon. Like the prodigal eyeing in his hunger 
and his shame from some far eminence the father's 
forsaken roof, we come not merely to be fed but to be 
reconciled ; — to deplore our past folly, as well as to re- 
move the present necessity. And parental as is the 
heart of our merciful Grod, He is yet unutterably pure 



132 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

and inflexibly just ; and He is and must remain " the 
Judge of all the earth," who cannot but " do right," 
and " who will by no means clear the guilty." 

Earnests and intimations of this His judicial char- 
acter, and of the equity that marks all his administra- 
tion, are strewn over the daily course of his Provi- 
dence ; and furnish, as said Bacon, the handwriting 
of the Divine Nemesis inscribed along the world's 
highways, and he who runs may read. But there 
comes a day, when this Justice will no longer, as now, 
but shoot out its brief, bright sparks, and scintillate 
its occasional flashes ; but when it will flame out in 
full-orbed radiance, and flood Earth and Heaven. In 
that day He will " bring every work into judgment, 
with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil." 
How shall / and how shall you abide that dread day 
of account — the day to which all days preceding it are 
to be held responsible, and when all the liabilities and 
debts, and arrears of a race morally insolvent, must be 
met in the final and tremendous reckoning ? If Eden, 
in the fresh bloom of its creation, grew dark with the 
frown and curse of God in the day of the Fall — if 
Sinai trembled and flamed, beneath the descending 
feet of the Lawgiver of Israel, even whilst He was 
leading the chosen tribes from bondage to their long- 
promised inheritance in Canaan — if Calvary, the very 
place of Reconciliation, for hours was all black and 
horrid, whilst the cry of an agonizing Redeemer 
through the thick cloud of a world's guilt went up to 
the Father forsaking Him ; — what shall the scene be, 
when — not two sinners only, as Adam and Eve in 



LECTURE VI. 133 

Paradise, but they and all the ten thousand times ten 
thousand of their sinful progeny with them — not the 
twelve backsliding Hebrew tribes alone, as in the Ara- 
bian desert, but all the kindreds and all the tribes of 
earth, of all climes, of all creeds, . and of all centuries, 
shall gather to the feet of the Crucified, and find Him 
not as once on the Mercy-seat, but now on the Great 
"White Throne ? Of old, he was seen hanging on the 
cross, that altar of Propitiation, where the blood of the 
victim as it dropped, cried better things than that of 
Abel, bespeaking pardon and hope. But soon, the 
whole family of man, and all the fallen angels, their 
tempters and confederates in rebellion, must gather, 
from earth, and sea, and Hell, to the feet once nailed 
upon the accursed tree, but now planted on the sap- 
phire pavement of the judgment-seat, — the heavenly 
Grabbatha. Now and here, the Man of Sorrows has 
come as the (rod of Terrors ; the Redeemer re-appears 
to vindicate his holiness and punish his enemies ; and 
they cry in vain to hills and rocks to hide them from 
the wrath of that Lamb whose mercy they long 
mocked. Once revealed as the Atoner, but scorned in 
that character, He now returns in His Second Advent 
as the dread Avenger, from whose fiery glance Earth 
and Heaven flee away, and there is found no place for 
them. Is there indeed a judgment, and am I to wit- 
ness, and share, and bide it ? Is there the shadow of 
the fragment of a hope, that I, sinner as I am, may be 
absolved in that day ? Let me know the way of es- 
cape. Tell, oh tell me the way to the one City of Refuge. 
Compared with that dread audit, what is there in 



134 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Earth, of pain, or loss, or woe, that should deserve a 
thought ? There is a Judgment. Not only does 
Scripture pledge it and portray it — Conscience wit- 
nesses of it, and Providence foreshadows it. The suf- 
ferings of the righteous in this life, long unavenged, 
and the frequent seeming impunity of the wicked, re- 
quire it. Aye — the very oaths of the profane invoke 
it. Earth's inequalities need to be there remedied. 
Earth's mysteries await on that day their long-ex- 
pected solution. Earth's iniquities are treasured up 
for that day of inquisition. Yes — Grod must judge, 
and man must be judged ; and all the quick and the 
dead, the small and the great, — all of us, from the 
graves of the wilderness and from the crowded ceme- 
tery of the metropolis, and from the abysses of ocean — 
must hear the rustling leaves of the book of doom, and 
must encounter the flaming glance of those pure Om- 
niscient Eyes, and bide the adjudication of those Infal- 
lible Lips ; as they read the record and append the 
sentence that wafts us to unspeakable bliss, or sinks 
us to irremediable perdition. For what purpose, if 
these things be so, do we live ? To eat and to drink — 
to win power, or luxury, or fame — or to build, or to 
plant, or to buy, or to sell ? Oh, no ! Before all this, 
and above all this, we live, or should live, to ensure 
our meeting in that day a favorable award,— to secure 
the Father's welcome, and the Saviour's acknowledg- 
ment of us, as the blessed ones whose iniquit ; as are 
forgiven and whose sins are covered. 

Yes, we need of Heaven that it both give and for- 
give. For if it but feed without pardoning and renew- 



LECTURE VI. 135 

ing us, then our daily bread is but fattening us for the 
slaughter, and like the stalled ox we go but to meet 
the descending axe ; and our abundance is cursed, like 
the bursting barns of the rich man whom Grod de- 
scribed as the " fool." Was it not a magnificently 
tremendous ceremony, when, of old, the twelve chosen 
tribes were parted on opposite mountains ; and the six 
on Mount Ebal confronting the six on Mount Grerizirn, 
there went thundering over the camp and the valley, 
the awful response against the transgressor of God's 
law, " Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed 
shalt thou be in the field, cursed shall be thy basket 
and thy store, and cursed shalt thou be when thou 
comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest 
out?" 

Ebal yet stands, in the Providence and Scripture of 
Grod ; and the curse yet resounds thence over each 
unforgiven man : — the bread between his teeth, his 
daily banquetings, his sleep and his toil, his study and 
his pleasure, his home and his kin — all are accursed. 
Like the food of the murmurers who perished, with 
the quails for which they clamored yet unchewed, we 
are, if impenitent and unpardoned, but feasting to fill 
our dishonored and hopeless places in Kibroth Hatta- 
avah, the graves of Lust. Like Dives, the sumptuous 
fare but ushers in the torment of the parched tongue, 
and the upward dartings of the quenchless and intol- 
erable burning. Unpardoned, our prosperity is but 
like the glorying of Herod, when the acclaim of the 
mob was yet ringing in the ears, whilst the worms of 
vengeance were fastening on the heart ; or. like the 



136 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

feastings of Belshazzar, on whose drunken revellings 
flashed the scymetar of the Persian slaughterer, and 
Riot lay crushed under sudden Doom. Let Grod with- 
hold what He may of earthly good — health, knowledge, 
freedom, and honor ; — if He but grant the pardon of 
sins, and the renewal of the heart, and acceptance in 
the day of the Lord Jesus — if He but forgive, though 
He give not — then all earthly losses and crosses,— 
however severe, however many, however long, — are but 
the brief and salutary pain inflicted by the skilful ocu- 
list as he couches the cataract- — a sharp pang, but soon 
past, and letting in at last, on the sufferer's eye, the 
flood of new-bofn day. But if, on the other hand, my 
grovelling and covetous heart choose Earth, and slight 
the skies — if I virtually say to Grod, Give, only give, 
but I care not to have Thee forgive — then, all my 
treasures, and raptures, and achievements here, are 
but as the tuft of grass which the ox snatches by the 
road-side, as it is driven unconsciously to the sham- 
bles, — a morsel whose sweetness is not long to be en- 
joyed, and that will not ward off the fatal death-stroke, 
or lull the agonies of impending dissolution. "With an 
Alexander's sway and an Alexander's fame given me, 
but my sins not through Christ forgiven me, better 
had it been for me that I had never been born. 

. The petition of our text is, then, a most momentous 
and indispensable accompaniment of that which pre- 
cedes it. It differs from the former, in asking not 
merely the day's supply, but in being left indefinite ; 
so as to imply, not only that we ask of Grod the can- 
celment of the day's sins, but of all the past sins of 



LECTURE VI. 137 

the lifetime as well. And it differs from it, also, in 
containing a pledge, that we deal mercifully with our 
fellow-man, in our asking Grod to deal mercifully with 
us. This pledge seems intended to serve as a contin- 
ual test, probing the daily state of our own hearts, and 
ascertaining whether, in the feelings there cherished 
toward our fellow-mortals and fellow-sinners, we are 
"the merciful who shall obtain mercy." But the 
whole current of the New Testament is against con- 
sidering this, as a plea with Grod; or regarding our 
gentleness, as in itself constituting a title to Divine favor. 
It is rather a test and evidence of the favor received 
from G-od. The two divisions of the sentence are, then, 

I. The request : " Forgive us our debts." 

II. The test : " As we forgive our debtors." 

May God's own Spirit work, in our hearts, the filial 
contrition and the fraternal compassion, which this 
brief sentence so wondrously blends. For, if left to 
our own proud blindness, how loth are we to acknowl- 
edge our guiltiness before G-od, and to sue in his 
courts for the boon of pardon, in the deep sense of our 
spiritual poverty and moral unworthiness. There 
was, in the early ages of the Christian era, a lying 
magician and philosopher, Apollonius of Tyanea, 
whom some of the ancients tried to set up as a rival, 
in wisdom and might and miracles, with our blessed 
Saviour. One of the speeches attributed to this 
Apollonius by his biographer is, " O ye gods, give me 
my duesP* Instead of holding himself indebted to 

* Tholuck's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, in the Edin- 
burgh Biblical Cabinet, vol. II. p. 197. 



138 THE LORD'S PRAVER. 

Heaven, he regarded Heaven as debtor to him, for 
what he supposed his blamelessness and eminent 
virtue. There bleated out the proud and impious 
folly of the unrenewed heart. But, as Coleridge 
beautifully said, in the later and more christian years 
of his life, the men who talk of earning Heaven by 
their own merits, might better begin by earning 
Earth. "Who of us really has deserved what he is 
daily enjoying of good, even chequered as that good 
may be, in this sublunary state, with mingling sorrow 
and joy ? But, surely, in our more sober and medita- 
tive hours, even the unregenerate feel, more or less 
distinctly, their own guiltiness. This it is that makes 
solitude dreadful, and diversion so necessary, in order 
to kill time and drown thought. This it is, that 
clothes death with terrors, and renders the image of a 
Grod, — holy and the hater of sin, — so irksome and 
formidable an idea to us. Even the men who spend 
all their earthly days in the City of Destruction, and 
never think of setting out on pilgrimage towards the 
Celestial City, yet cannot escape, in their daily paths, 
and in their rambles of business or amusement, the 
miring of their weary feet at times in the thick clay 
of the Slough of Despond. The most worldly and the 
most giddy, — the covetous, heaping up gold, and the 
gay, flitting from one scene of fashionable amusement 
to another, find Care dogging their steps, and em- 
bittering their goblet ; and cannot shut out the occa- 
sional thought of sin and woe — cannot avoid cast- 
ing, at some moment, a downward glance into the 
abysms of inward unworthiness, and snatching though 



LECTURE VI. 139 

it be avertedly, upward glimpses of the coming judg- 
ment. The lightning of the storm without sometimes 
pales, in their experience, the torches of the revel 
within. The wide existence of sacrifices in the hea- 
then world, and the practice of the confession of sins 
and the deprecation of wrath, as found in all ages of 
the world's history, and in all tribes of the earth's in- 
habitants, point most significantly to one and the 
same great plague of the human heart, — the guilt, 
more or less clearly felt as residing in man's nature, 
and meriting the wrath of a just Grod. 

But how do men strive to lessen this irksome, yet 
inevitable, consciousness, by vain pleas and extenua- 
tions and criminations of their fellows, as these last 
have been their tempters, abettors, and accomplices. 
How do they seek to obliterate the record against 
them by flattering, and at times by bribing Heaven. 
But can our richest gifts buy the All-rich, and our 
most lavish flatteries cheat the All-wise Grod ? He, 
who closed with a flaming sword the gates of Eden, 
against our first parents when they had first sinned, 
will He unbar the better gates of the higher Paradise 
to us, habitual and life-long transgressors, — merely 
because of our fluent vows and our costly oblations ? 
He is the Grod of Sinai. Do its forked lightnings 
gleam hope into the guilty heart ? His summons 
wrapt the guilty world of old, in the watery veil of 
the Deluge, wiping its guilty tenants out of life. His 
voice, in after times, called down upon Gromorrah the 
fiery rain ; and, in yet later days, gave up His own 
Jerusalem to the Chaldean first, and to the Roman 



140 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

last, to be trodden down by the Gentiles. All this 
He did because of sin. And that same voice is pledged 
to wrap in a veil of flame, and to embathe in a second 
and consuming deluge of wrath, the world in its later 
and doting days of yet more aggravated and inexcus 
able iniquity. How can such a God be appeased, so 
that He shall efface the record of our moral indebted- 
ness ? The curse, in Zechariah's vision, was seen fly- 
ing in mid-heaven, and entering the house of the 
sinner. Has it not its flight how, and its entrance 
into our homes and our hearts ; — into our bodily tab- 
ernacle and the inner spiritual shrine of our con- 
sciences ? Has not death passed upon all men because 
that all have sinned ? If any man say he have no 
sin, he deceiveth himself, and the truth is not in him. 
Not in bribes, or vows, or solemn words, or flowing 
tears, or richest victims of our providing, may we 
dare to hope. The blood of Christ alone can cancel 
the dark catalogue of transgression. He who uttered 
our text, long ere He uttered it, had been announced 
by his. Forerunner, John the Baptist, as the Lamb of 

GoD THAT TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD. Though 

this prayer, then, did not fully enunciate the truth, 
that He was, Himself, the channel ; yet, like the sac- 
rifices of the Old Testament, both in patriarchal and 
Levitical times, this prayer presupposed and intimated 
such atonement as the basis that made forgiveness 
possible. A holy God could not revoke His wise and 
good law. An adequate compensation, and a suffi- 
cient righteousness, must be provided. God the Son, 
could furnish what no meaner victim might supply. 



LECTURE VI. 141 

And all hope of pardon, here or hereafter, — all idea 
of God's favor along the earthly pathway, and God's 
acceptance of us in the eternal world, — grew out of 
that one oblation, promised, in the Seed of the "Wo- 
man, to the inmates of the garden of Eden, presented 
on Golgotha, and extolled and adored in the endless 
anthems of the New Jerusalem. He cancelled the 
handwriting of ordinances that was against us, nailing 
it to his cross. And the very prayer, that as the 
Prophet of his Church he taught, must be virtually 
the supplement following his own one Sacrifice, and be 
seconded before the Throne by His own perpetual In- 
tercession, as the High Priest of that Church. 

Legalism was not the method of salvation in the 
Old Testament. It is not the teaching of the Sermon 
on the Mount, more than it is of the Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, which so lays the axe at the root of all human 
merit and of all mortal righteousness. In the antedilu- 
vian home of godly Enoch — under the curtains of the 
Tabernacle,— within the veil of the Temple- — in the an- 
cient synagogue and in the modern sanctuary, all hope 
of effectual Prayer and availing Pardon abjured Right- 
eousness by the Law. As little is it taught in the 
Psalms of David, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
as little in Leviticus, as in the book of the Revelation 
of John. The earlier dispensations were based on pro- 
phecies and types of the cross ; as the later dispensation 
clusters around that cross, in its actual and antitypicai 
reality, now reared on high ; propitiating Heaven, and 
quelling Hell, and ransoming Earth. Our Saviour 
looked, with presaging glance, on the scene beneath the 



142 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

olive-trees of Grethsemane, and into the open tomb of 
Joseph's garden, even as He was framing for us this 
petition. He saw, in His own dread Passion, the one 
plea for our pardon ; in His own weltering blood and 
in His own purchased descent of the Spirit, the laver 
of our sin, and the satisfaction of our debt, and the re- 
moval of our corruption. 

Now our forgetfulness of our sin does not obliterate 
or annul it. Gruilt is here expressly called our debt ; 
perchance to guard us against that very neglect and 
oblivion. Just as a debt to our fellow-citizen becomes 
only the more large in its amount, and the more ruinous 
in its enforcement, by our want of memory and exact- 
ness as to meeting it — just as the pecuniary burden of 
debt is easily contracted, and the money which it won is 
often frivolously wasted, on trifles and toys of transient 
value, — so we sin easily, to reckon for our sin one day 
most surely and most sorely. In our times, the can- 
cerous mortgage, left undischarged, gradually grows 
until it eats out the entire heritage, and forfeits for the 
reckless tenant the home of his childhood, and poisons 
and kills often the whole energy and enterprise ancl 
hopefulness of the unhappy debtor. And, of old, debt 
perilled not merely the property, but the liberty, and 
in Roman law the very life of the man indebted. 
Even thus, our guilt, unconfessed, unrepented, and 
unforgiven, left slowly to grow with growing years, 
and growing worldliness and growing unbelief, is 
mortgaging our happiness, our spiritual freedom, 
and our eternal life; and will soon, " eating as doth a 
canker," rob us of all hope of Heaven, and sell us to 



LECTURE VI. 143 

that land of exile and durance, whose wretched dwel- 
lers hear no trump of Jubilee inviting them back to 
the forfeited inheritance— forfeited once and forfeited 
forever. Whilst " we are in the way," then, we do 
well to conciliate " our adversary," ere Justice " de- 
liver us to the Judge," and the Judge consign us to 
the prison-house of endless despair ; — that prison whose 
bolts once drawn to enclose us, rust, never to be drawn 
back, and the hinges of whose gates once closed on the 
guilty, never turn more to permit their egress to Hope 
and Peace and Heaven. 

We must recognize and confess our sin. And the 
devout mind, after every preceding petition in the 
Lord's Prayer, prepares to drop in the utterance of the 
petition now before us, as into the dust of lowliest self- 
abasement. Is He our Father ? this fatherhood has 
been spurned by His ingrate children. Is He in 
Heaven, our native home and our proper end ? We 
have lived, as if we had sprung from Earth, and were 
ripening only for Hell. His Name, dread and pure, 
is it worthy, always and by all, to he hallowed ? How 
have our daring levity and defiance profaned it ; and 
trailed its sacred honors, as in the mire of our scorn 
and our filth ; and hung what is the dread blazonry uf 
Heaven over deeds and tempers sprung of the pit. Is 
His kingdom to be hailed and extended ? How have 
we played, toward its glories and authority, the part 
of the rebel and the traitor. Is His ivill deserving of 
all obedience and study and conformity ? How have 
we preferred to it our own will, and the will of the 
Murderer and Deceiver, Satan. Gives He still, kind 



144 THE lord's prayer. 

and long-suffering, our daily bread ? How have wo 
" crammed and blasphemed our Feeder." 

To subdue this sin, will it be sufficient to secure 
forgiveness for the past ? Not — unless we staunch the 
fountain of evil, and provide against its outgushings 
for the future. To this later work the succeeding pe- 
titions of the prayer refer. When Jesus came down to 
meet our debt, and to justify us by his righteousness and 
death, He also made provision and purchase of the 
Holy Spirit to renew and to sanctify. When we turn 
in true faith to His atonement, we do also experience 
in the heart a renewing change* that destroys the do- 
minion and power of sin. Our past nonconformity to 
the Divine Law is pardoned by His righteousness ; and 
our future and growing conformity to that law is se- 
cured by the new nature w T hich the Spirit imparts and 
sustains, through His regenerating and hallowing en- 
ergy. In conversion, Christ reveals himself to your 
believing soul, not only as the Moses who tears you 
from the Egyptian prison, but as the Joshua who in- 
stals you in the promised Canaan. The law, shorn 
to you of its blighting curse (as it touched in your 
stead the atoning Lamb, and discharged on him its 
fatal thunderbolt), sends yet its holy electricity into 
your renewed and grateful rieart. That law is trans- 
ferred from the stony and outer tables hewn from Si- 
nai's cliffs, where it condemned you, to the inner and 
fleshly table of your own softened heart, where it in- 
structs and aids to sanctify you. 

To urge this sanctifying work, to ascertain day by 
day our spiritual course, as the mariner, da;y by day, 



LECTURE VI. 145 

takes his observation, and calculates the place of his 
ship and the rate of his voyage, — so you examine 
yourself, whether in your spiritual condition are to be 
found the traces and evidences of sin forgiven. 

II. We thus reach the second division of our sub- 
ject The test — " As we forgive our debtors." If 
reconciled to Grod, you are assimilated to Him. As 
He is Love, you learn in gratitude to Him, to love 
your fellow-sinner. In the unregenerate state, the 
same Fall, dread and disastrous, which tore Human 
Nature and Human Society, loose from God, shivered 
it into a thousand separate and dissociated fragments. 
Men, parted from Heaven, became selfishly parted 
from each other. The first human pair in Eden com- 
menced, as sinners, an interchange of selfish crimina- 
tions. And even in converted men, just as sin regains 
its old power to delude them, its divisive tendencies 
towards their fellow-men reappear. "When David had 
himself wrought folly in Israel and sinned heinously 
against the Grod of Israel, he became, unconsciously to 
himself, in the very eclipse of the Divine favor, more 
prompt and harsh in his disparagement of others. In 
his days of early piety, when a shepherd lad, had he 
heard Nathan's parable, and the incident it so touch- 
ingly recited, he would doubtless have justly and 
strongly censured the rich man's covetous greed, and 
his rapacious cruelty towards his poor neighbor ; but, 
perhaps, he would then have hardly said, as he did in 
the days of his own obdurate profligacy, when Uriah's 
blood was not dry on his hand, " The man that hath 
done this thing — robbed, forsooth, the cottager oi hia 

7 



146 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

little pet lamb — shall surely die"— for sin, as indulged 
within ourselves against Gtod, makes us harsh — need- 
lessly and intolerantly harsh in the feeling we cherish, 
against the sin of man towards man. As poor Burns 
so feelingly said of one of his own besetting iniquities, 
it may be asserted of all transgression, that it 

" Hardens all within 
And petrifies the feeling." 

Now, to afford us a daily test against this returning 
tendency to selfishness, and to proud and unforgiving 
revenge, — to aid us, as it were, in detecting the re- 
current symptoms of the malady which He, as the great 
Physician, has begun to heal in each true penitent, 
He calls us to a daily and domestic scrutiny. "We do 
not show a forgiving and generous spirit, in order that 
thus we may earn Heaven ; but we are warned that 
the indulgence of a contrary spirit necessarily forfeits 
Heaven. "We test our spiritual condition, not by ask- 
ing how our feelings are towards the dead — to our 
best friends — or towards angels. The Pharisees could 
praise dead saints, and canonize prophets, when once 
safe and mute in their graves. But we ask, What are 
my feelings towards the living prophets and witnesses 
of Heaven — to my living neighbor, and rival, and en- 
emy ? When our Saviour healed the sick man of his 
long and sore infirmity, and bade him take up his bed 
and walk ; the poor man's lifting of his couch and 
flinging its light weight on his rejoicing shoulders, 
was not the means of his cure, or the condition of his 



LECTURE vr. 147 

healing Tt was the evidence, tangible and visible to 
himseli and others, in the streets along which he 
passed, and in the home he re-entered, that he had en- 
countered a great Prophet, and had received a miracu- 
lous healing. And so, when the leper, purged of his 
leprosy, was bidden to go and show himself to the 
priest, as he bared the skin now clear and white to the 
glance of the Levite, he was not fulfilling a condition 
of the cure, but receiving an authentication, a public 
and unimpeachable and official endorsement of it. 

And even thus is it, in this prayer. It is not our 
placability that purchases for us remission. Had the 
imperturbable countenance which Talleyrand was ac- 
customed to wear, even when insulted, been the index 
of as imperturbable a soul, free from all malicious re- 
membrances, it would not in itself have merited eter- 
nal blessedness. But Grod would furnish, as it were, 
in the forgiving spirit of His people, a portable cru- 
cible, so to speak, in which to try and purge daily the 
fine gold of our own heavenly hopes. To arm us 
against the selfishness which so clings to us, this peti- 
tion, like all those preceding it, is not for the solitary 
suppliant. He asks not for himself, though like the 
prophet's penitents he " mourns apart;'''' but he im- 
plores in unison and sympathy with the absent. He 
says not, Forgive me, but forgive us. And then going 
beyond all the other petitions, he makes reference not 
to the absent only, but to the alienated — the injurious 
— the hostile. When Christianity was hunted in its 
early days to the catacombs, and dragged thence to 
the lions of the amphitheatre, glorious as were its 



148 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

other evidences of a Divine origin and a heavenward 
mission, what was a more beautiful seal of its super- 
human spirit than this, — that the defamed, and de- 
spoiled, and tormented disciple, could forgive and love 
the cruel and hardened judge, who insulted and tor- 
tured him, and spend, like Stephen, his dying breath, 
in prayer for the multitude who were howling for his 
blood ? And, many and resplendent as were the 
seals of our Lord's Sonship and Deity, — in the prophe- 
cies that heralded, and the miracles that attended 
Him, — yet even, amid all the other stupendous won- 
ders of the Crucifixion, was not that a moral miracle 
of surpassing loveliness, when the meek Nazarene 
lifted to Heaven, for the taunting, cursing rabble 
that murdered Him, the cry, " Father, forgive them. 
They know not what they do !" 

2 But does this require of man to forego all rights 
and the duties which society owes him of protection 
from evil-doers ? Paul thought not so ; when he 
required the Philippian magistrates and the Roman 
captain at Jerusalem, to pay him the due debt of re- 
gard for his citizenship in the Imperial city. It does 
not include, on our part, the utter impunity of offences 
against the public security. The excellent Sir Mat- 
thew Hale, on the judgment-seat, was not required by 
his piety to let a culprit go unscathed of the just law 
of the land. Or had a Grod-fearing Puritan detected 
the Romish conspirator, Guy Faux, in his murderous 
preparations in the vaults of the British Parliament 
House, and had the traitor professed penitence, and 
implored pardon and oblivion for his fault, the Chris- 



LECTURE VI. 14ft 

tian who had surprised the plotter would not, by this 
petition, be required or even permitted to conceal the 
sin. Or, had a Christian soldier surprised the traitor 
Arnold, on his passage to the enemy with a plan in his 
hand of the fortress he proposed to betray, and had the 
betrayer feigned repentance and . besought silence, 
neither patriotism nor religion would have permitted 
that Christian soldier to concede the request. Yet, as 
to private offrnces, not involving public wrongs, we 
are to cherish a »id show a tender and generous spirit ; 
forgiving, not as 'he Jewish Rabbies taught — -merely 
for three times, and then ceasing — but even till seventy 
times seven, him who turns again saying, I repent. 
The world may taunt the lowly and gentle temper 
thus shown, as a recent German sceptic has done, call- 
ing the patience of the gospel a doglike virtue, the 
grace of a beaten hound ; but how noble and godlike 
is it thus to pass by a transgression. And how happy 
is such a spirit. The man thus encased, in true fra- 
ternal love of his kind, and cherishing this filial rever- 
ence and gratitude for his God, has, to use the apostle's 
language, " his feet shod with the preparation of the 
gospel of peace." He is in peace, armed and arrayed 
to trample down, unfelt, the briers that would long 
and poisonously rankle in the unregenerate heart ; and 
life's thorny and uneven path becomes less dreadful — 
a son of peace, he inherits for himself the calm, meek 
benediction he invokes upon others. 

3. But how opposite is all this to the spirit of re- 
venge, that, as cultivated in the world, has shaped the 
code of the duellist. There are those who seem to keep 



150 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

vengeance as a growing hoard against some real oi 
fancied slight or wrong, until the fitting hour arrives, 
and then the avalanche rolls to bury, if possible, its 
victim. There are others who say sullenly, that they 
forgive but cannot forget. Now, God, in His prom- 
ises of forgiveness, illustrates the pardon by describing 
it as an oblivion of the sin, or a blotting of it out, and 
a casting it behind Him, a flinging it into the sea, 
to appear no more. Such instead of burying their 
wrongs, as they profess to do, may be said to embalm 
them ; and a busy and eager memory keeps unbroken 
all the lineaments of the injury they have received. 

There are others, who boast that they never forget 
either an injury or a kindness. They forget surely 
one kindness at least, — and that the greatest one man 
has ever received, — the Redeemer who died to efface 
their guilt and to win their pardon ; and who, with 
the free boon of forgiven sin, bequeathed to them as 
his loving legacy, " Tolerance and unrevenging Love" 
toward their fellow-debtors. u Freely ye have re- 
ceived, freely give." One who had studied w T ell that 
legacy and its lesson, a much enduring martyr and 
apostle, had learned of it another spirit. And though 
the Greek scorned, and the Jew hated him, yet view- 
ing the free cancelment of all his debt of sin by 
Christ's redeeming cross, and by Christ's ineffable and 
inexhaustible Love, he counted himself, and gladly 
counted himself, henceforth " a debtor to Jew and to 
Greek, to Barbarian and to Scythian, and to bond and 
to free." Ignorance might jeer, and Stupidity gaze, 
and Malice hunt, and Falsehood blacken ; but he 



LECTURE VI. 15 1 

looked to the Sufferer on Calvary, and with eyes suf- 
fused with tears of gratitude and joy, he looked around 
on Malice, and Stupidity, and Falsehood, and Igno- 
rance, with a serene pity, and on those who cherished 
them, with a brother's vigilant compassion, and a 
Christian's outgushing tenderness. 

Now contrast, if you will, the apostle of the Gren- 
tiles, this warrior of the Gospel, with the heroes of 
modern romance and poesy,— fiery and implacable, 
nursing a grudge through a lifetime, and counting re- 
venge the sternest of duties and the sweetest of luxu- 
ries. Of some of them, it may be said, that the 
Decalogue of (rod has been displaced to give room for 
a Duologue — and the only two principles of life which 
they seem to recognize, as of permanent obligation, are 
a ruthless Hatred and a reckless Licentiousness. And, 
in some, the Hatred seems to be not so much origi- 
nated from wrong which they have endured, as from 
wrong they have inflicted. It is yet true, as an old 
Roman annalist remarked in his day, that the worst 
of hate is that cherished by the wrong-doer to his 
victim. 

" Forgiveness to the injured does belong, 
But they need pardon who commit the wrong. "* 

But let us all remember, that, by Heaven's just 
and immutable decree, the unforgiving are the un- 
forgiven. And we need all, and always, while on 
earth, the fresh and the free forgiveness of God. The 
gospel is a message of repentance and of the remission 
* Dryden. 



152 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

of sins. Now, if, — my fellow-heir of immortality, 
speeding with me to the feet of the Judge, — if you 
will not come to the gospel on the terms which it 
states — if you cling to a self-righteousness that asks 
no pardon — if your views of human dignity and merit 
spurn the doctrines of Grace — we beseech you to pon- 
der the nature and bearings of your system. A sys- 
tem that claims Heaven on the basis of Merit, if it 
could be substantiated, would make the Bible, — in its 
self-renouncing doctrines, and in its self-abasing de- 
mands, — into a libel on Human Nature ; and would 
prove the God who is its author and utterer false, 
slanderous, and boastful, — slanderous, because He 
has impeached the archangel man as a revolter and a 
criminal — boastful, because He claims gratitude and 
homage in that Bible for a salvation which, if your 
system be true, the race does not need, and ought to 
spurn as needless and insulting. Yes, he who does 
not, as a penitent, believe in Jesus, and seek forgive- 
ness in His Name, makes God a liar. So says the 
Bible. Such is the contrariety between you and Scrip- 
ture. "Will you venture to uphold the contradiction, 
when the Redeemer returns — and the books are opened 
— and the Judgment begins ? 

Have you, on the contrary, full conviction that tho 
Fall is no mere allegory or obsolete myth, but a lamen- 
table and permanent verity, of which your own con- 
sciousness and inward experience furnish fresh evi- 
dence ? Do you, smitten by the edge of God's broad, 
keen law, find all hope of justification from your own 
righteousness slain within you ? Do you feel the worth 



LECTURE VI. i53 

of a better and imputed righteousness, as presented 
in the sacrifice and merits of Jesus Christ ? Be not 
contented without the witness of the Scripture and 
the witness of the Spirit, to your own interest in the 
pardon which Christ bought, and your acceptance of the 
" everlasting righteousness," which he freely proffers. 
Ask, in daily scrutiny of your own heart and way, 
and in daily study of God's living Oracles, and in daily 
resort to the Living High Priest, upon the open Mercy 
Seat, the daily and home-felt renewal of your blessed- 
ness, as the man to whom the Lord imputeth not in- 
iquity. "Walking continually beside the crumbling 
edge of the grave, and liable, at any moment, to be 
rapt by Death* into the state eternal and unchange- 
able, " pray without ceasing," to have the abiding 
seals of the Divine Mercy to your own soul, and this 
seal, amongst others, — your habitual meekness and 
overcoming mercifulness towards your fellow-man. 
7# 



"anil \nl n tint into femptata." 



LECTURE VII. 

"M Iwn its iwt intn tnuptntim" 

Matthew, vi. 13. 

The language of the petition preceding this is that 
of confessed guiltiness. The request now before us 
is that of conscious weakness, imploring help against 
itself and its many foes, lest guilt return and remain 
upon us. When we cry to God " Forgive us," we 
put ourselves in the place, and avow the feelings of 
the Prodigal restored. From the father's board we 
look back to our riot and exile, and fluttering rags, 
and gnawing hunger, as we stood beside the trough 
amid the husks, around which crowded a noisy, jost- 
ling herd of unclean beasts. When we go on, to im- 
plore of Him that He should " lead us not into temp- 
tation" we entreat that we may not be abandoned, 
lest we become the Prodigal Relapsed — apostates, 
whose conscience has only become vitrified by the 
Truth and the Grace, by which it should have been 
melted. True penitence for the follies of the past, 
implies a keen vigilance against the snares of the 
future. The rescued prisoner dreads the return and 



158 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

plottings, and ambushments, and surprises of his old 
captors. But do we ascribe to God the work of Satan; 
and do we make the Holy One of Israel the ensnarer 
and corrupter of His creation ? Is man's Maker man's 
Tempter? No, — as one of Christ's hearers at the 
very time when this prayer against temptation was 
given, the Apostle James, years after, wrote, " Grod 
tempteth no man, nor can Himself be tempted of evil." 
From the poverty of human language, however, many 
words have more than one meaning ; and temptation 
is a term of this very class. In one of its significa- 
tions, the sense of alluring to sin, Grod is incapable 
of it. In another, however, the sense of trying and 
displaying character, Grod, as the Judge of the earth, 
is and must be, whilst this life of probation lasts, 
pledged to continue this application of the probe and 
the crucible to human character. So he tempted Abra- 
ham, when testing the strength of his faith and guaging 
the depth of his love to Grod, by asking the sacrifice of 
Isaac. So he tried Israel in the wilderness, to prove 
them, and to know what was in their hearts. So he 
lets affliction and prosperity, and the changing events 
of changing times go over us, to develope and reveal 
us to ourselves and to others. But if He does, in this 
latter sense of the term, subject every heart and char- 
acter to the scrutiny of His providential tests, and 
trials, why, it may be asked, should we here deprecate 
it ? Ought we not rather to court it, and welcoming 
it, as the same apostle bids us, " count it all joy to 
fall into divers temptations ?" And then, should we 
not invoke rather than deplore these needful and profit- 



LECTURE VII. 15& 

able trials ? We reply : The protest and supplication 
of our text are directed against temptations too strong 
and too grave, " more than we are able to bear" and. 
the petition is, on the believer's part, a virtual urging 
of the promise elsewhere given, that Grod will, to His 
own humble and penitent suppliants, with every temp- 
tation provide a way of escape. 

What we mean — when we ask of Him that He 
should conduct us not into such intolerable and over- 
mastering temptation as shall sweep our faith from 
its foothold, hurl us from our steadfastness, and whelm 
us in despair and perdition, — may be illustrated from 
an incident in the history of the prophet Elisha.^ 
The Syrian army, a great host, with their prancing 
horses and rattling chariots, had been sent to Dothan, 
a city in Israel, of smaller size, and where the prophet 
has his residence. This town the besieging force were 
probably competent to surround and beleaguer. They 
beguiled the journey thither, perchance, with specula- 
tions as to their probable spoil, and as to their cap- 
tives' fate. But at the prophet's prayer, the prophet's 
Grod smote them with blindness. And, then, they un- 
wittingly surrendered themselves to be led into the 
capital city of Israel. They enter the broad-leaved 
gates of Samaria with its stronger garrisons and its 
more imposing bulwarks ; and, when the spell is re- 
moved, the Syrians find themselves shut up in an alien 
city, and hemmed around by a superior force, like the 
wolf entrapped on the verge of the sheepfold, in the 
pit which the hunters have dug, his flight hopelessly 
f 2 Kings, vi. 



160 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

barred by the solid walls of his dungeon, and threat- 
ened on every side with the shepherds' bristling 
spears To Dothan their own captains had led these 
Pagan bands, expecting merely a human foe, and in 
the less numerous hosts of Israel there stationed, not 
dreading an unequal or disastrous rencounter. But 
to Samaria God's own hand conducted them, to en- 
counter more than mere mortal powers, — not to enclose 
the city, as they had hoped, but to be themselves en- 
closed within its ramparts, and to awake from their 
delusion as they saw flaunting from every turret and 
angle of the walls the standards of an enemy out- 
numbering their own forces, and who had become 
without a conflict their triumphant and mocking cap- 
tors. The Syrians had come from their own homes, 
expecting to be led past, or to be led victoriously 
through such cities of Israel, as they might see fit to 
visit. Instead of this they were led into the metrop- 
olis of the land which they had invaded, to find them- 
selves prisoners and victims without a battle and 
without a blow. The wolf was led into the trap, 
and it had shut down upon him. 

Now God may give us up to ourselves and to our 
spiritual adversaries, so that we shall be led into temp- 
tation, and hopelessly caged and entrapped within its 
impassable barriers, meeting a den where we had 
thought to find a thoroughfare. But his believing 
people, vigilant and prayerful, whilst they may not 
expect to escape all collision with the allurements and 
suggestions of evil, will be led, by the Captain of their 
salvation, not into it, so much as through it and past 



LECTURE VII. 161 

it. With prayer for our weapon and God for our 
guide, my beloved hearers, we need not fear, but that 
God will make every stronghold of the tempter what 
Jericho was to the chosen tribes, a doomed city whose 
walls cannot stand before the cry of our faith, and 
whose hosts melt into dismay and defeat before our 
exulting onset. God will make us more than con- 
querors over all our enemies, and " bruise Satan under 
our feet shortly." But if we go on, presumptuous and 
self-confident, — forgetting God and restraining prayer, 
we shall find our Dothans become unexpectedly Sa- 
marias, and be led, ere we are aware, into the lures of 
some mighty and overwhelming temptation that will 
furnish, if God's mercy do not prevent it, the dungeon 
of our hopes and the scaffold of our souls. An Ahitho- 
phel or a Judas, greedy of revenge or gold, finds the 
snare that had been woven for other prey, unexpectedly 
haltering his own neck. A Haman rears some mighty 
and conspicuous scheme of wickedness, all, as he sup- 
poses, at the expense of his hapless neighbors ; but 
where he is, in God's wondrous purposes, to become 
himself the first victim — a spectacle of Craft, caught 
and choked in its own toils. 

With these preliminary remarks, as to what we sup- 
pose the force of the figure here employed, let us im- 
plore God's blessing and the aids of His Spirit, as we 
consider, 

I. The danger: " Lead us not into temptation." 

II. The refuge : " Lead us not into temptation." 
In God's Providence, grace, and Spirit, we seek defence 



162 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

from the evils around and within us — "Lead (Thou— 
Lord and Father.") 

III. The Intercession : " Lead us not into temptation." 
"We ask not merely for our own personal perils, but for 
our fellow-voyagers through the reefs and quicksands of 
life as well ; for the household, the church, the city, and 
nation, the present age and the coming race of mankind. 

I. Our danger springs from the fact of our moral 
weakness, and that, even if we have been regener- 
ated and pardoned, our moral convalescence is as yet 
but imperfect, and its progress exceedingly protracted 
and tedious. " Elias was a man of like passions with 
us" The best of men are but brands plucked from 
the burning, all charred with the fires through which 
they have past, and readily rekindling at the contact of 
the casual spark — much more of the wide-spread con- 
flagration around them. We carry about us an internal 
enemy, in that heart " deceitful above all things and 
desperately wicked," a traitor not plotting without and 
at the gates, but in the inmost citadel, cherishing even 
there his proneness to backslide from Shaddai to Diabo- 
lus, and but too eager to sell afresh the town of Man- 
soul to its old tyrannous usurper. We are surrounded 
by evil influences and ensnaring examples in the world 
which hems our path. " Ill-speech" is not only shout- 
ing his proclamations at " Ear-gate ;" but, in the friv- 
olous and foul literature of our times, this orator and 
herald of Diabolus is sending his letters missive to 
" Eye-gate" as well, in ceaseless profusion. We do not 
believe, with a French philosopher of our times, that it 
is strictly true, that the age it is which makes the man ; 



LECTURE VII. 163 

we hold rather that Grod moulds both the age and the 
man, and influences the one by the other. Nor do we 
believe, with the infidel Socialist, Robert Owen, that 
individual character is the mere passive creation of 
social circumstances, and that for our peculiar charac- 
ter we are consequently not personally responsible ; 
for we see all experience, and all history, and all con- 
sciousness sustaining the doctrine of the Bible, that 
our own inclinations have yet more to do with our 
character and condition than our neighbor's examples, 
and that " as a man thinketh in his heart so IS HE." 
But it is also true, that our associates and contempo- 
raries most powerfully influence us for good or evil, 
The table of a riotous Belshazzar was not the most 
favorable place for learning or practising temperance. 
The family of Lot were little likely to be eminent for 
prudence or virtue, reared amid the flagitious cities of 
the guilty plain. Evil rulers, and authors, and teach- 
ers, and companions, how much do they destroy of 
good, and how potent are they for evil. And, in addi- 
tion to these human sources of corruption, let us re- 
member the influence of the unseen Satan and his 
spiritual hosts. Subtle, inveterate, practised, and un- 
tiring, — flitting restlessly, in sight of a lost and hated 
Heaven, around our sin-defiled Earth, which he covets 
as his dominion, — he goeth about as a roaring lion 
seeking whom he may devour, — his hate unsated, and 
his craft not easily foiled. Formidable he is in his open 
and roaring wrath ; more formidable in his goodly mask 
and saintly disguise, as an angel of light ; and not least 
formidable, again, is he, when persuading a Sadducean 



164 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

age like our own, that he is but a nonentity, and an 
obsolete bugbear of older and ruder times. 

Then, let us remember the accursed alchemy of sin 
in us and in our tempters, both the visible and invis- 
ible, — that hellish art of corruption, which can make 
God's own works and choice gifts, occasions of temp- 
tation to us, and render our very blessings a curse. 
Thus, a mother's kindness may injure the child on 
whom it is lavished. Friendship and kindred, and 
home and love, all may ensnare us. "Wealth, in itself 
God's gift, how often is it made, by man's coveting, 
" filthy lucre." Knowledge, the food of the soul, how 
may it become the poisonous and baleful fruit of the 
forbidden tree ; and worldly honor and worldly power, 
what crimes have they incited and palliated and pro- 
tected. Life, may become, — as in the case of many of 
the antediluvians it seems to have done, — though its 
every hour, throughout its long centuries were a new 
favor of Heaven — may become, in consequence of the 
treachery of man's heart misinterpreting its lessons, — a 
fresh and stronger temptation to persevere in sin ; and 
its extension may but serve to foster the hopes of pro- 
longed impunity in wickedness. Our Bibles, and Sab- 
baths, and sanctuaries, and religious privileges, maybe 
all so used or relied upon as to become but a seal of ag- 
gravation to our guilt, and of hopelessness as to our final 
conversion. The prophets' tombs, and Abraham for an 
ancestor, helped to make the Pharisees the more the 
children of Hell. Social progress may become the 
watchword of revolt against Revelation and Grod — Lib- 
erty oe perverted into an occasion of licentiousness— 



LECTURE VII. 165 

and the very ordinances and creeds of Christianity 
be transmuted into a veil and den for Antichrist. The 
power of immoral transmutation, of turning good into 
evil, possessed by our fallen nature, is most tremendous 
and appalling. Aye— the blood of a scorned Saviour, 
may be made, by your unbelief and mine, the deadliest 
element in our present sin and in our coming woe. De- 
spite done to the Spirit of grace may convert His be- 
nign ministerings and proffered comfortings, into the 
foundation of the sin that hath no remission before God, 
and no hope for all eternity. And in no scene of Earth, 
— in no condition, — are we exempt from the incursions 
of temptation. If we flee to the desert, and brook not 
the sight of our fellow-creature's face, we bear thither 
the fiend within ; we cannot build out or bar out the in- 
dwelling devil. The gratings of the monastery cannot 
exclude the wings of the Fallen Seraph, nor solitude sanc- 
tify the unregenerate heart. In the garden or the grove, 
the palace or the hermitage, the -crowded city or the 
howling wilderness, Sin tracks us and Self haunts us. 
If the poor is tempted to envy and dishonesty ; the 
rich, as Agur testified, is equally endangered by pride 
and luxury. If the man of ten talents is puffed up 
with self-confidence and arrogant impiety ; the man 
of one talent is prone to bury slothfully the portion in- 
trusted to him in the earth, and then to quarrel with 
its Holy Giver The great adversary has in every 
scene his snares, and varies his baits for every age and 
variety of condition and character. Each man and 
child of us has his easily besetting sin. The rash and 
the cautious, the young and the old, the rude and the 



166 THE LORD S PRAYER. 

educated, the visitant of the sanctuary and the open 
neglecter of it, the profane and the devout, the lover 
of solitude and the lover of society — all have their 
snares. Satan can misquote Scripture and misinter- 
pret Providence — and preach presumption or despair, 
heresy or superstition, or infidelity, as he finds best. 
He can assume the sage, the sophist, or the buffoon, 
the canonist or the statesman, at will. He spares not 
spiritual greatness. Paul was buffeted. The most 
eminent of Grod's saints, of the Old Testament and the 
New, — Noah, Abraham, David, Hezekiah, and the 
Apostles, have suffered by him. He spares not the 
season of highest spiritual profiting. Ere you rise 
from your knees, his suggestions crowd the devout 
heart. Ere the sanctuary is quitted, his emissaries, 
as birds of the air, glean away the scattered seeds of 
truth from the memory. When our Lord himself had 
been, at his baptism, owned from Heaven as the Son 
of God, he was led away, by the Spirit, into the wil- 
derness to be tempted. And how often does some fiery 
dart glance on the Christian's armor, just after some 
season of richest communion with his Grod. Descend 
from the Mount of Revelation with Moses ; and at its 
foot is an idolatrous camp, dancing around* a golden 
calf. Come down with entranced apostles from the 
Mount of Transfiguration ; and the world, whom there 
you encounter, are a grief to the Holy One by their 
unbelieving cavils. As John Newton pithily said : It 
is the man bringing his dividend from the Bank door 
who has most cause to dread the pilferer's hand. Yes 
* — Temptation spared not Christ himself. Mother 



LECTURE VII. 16? 

and brethren tempted our Lord, when the one would 
prescribe to Him the season and scene of putting forth 
his veiled Godhead, at the marriage feast in Cana of 
G-alilee ; and when the other would have hurried the 
hour of his going up to the temple at Jerusalem. Dis- 
ciples tempted Him, when they cried, Grod forbid, to 
his predictions of His mediatorial sufferings, and quar- 
relled about the division of seats in His kingdom. The 
multitude tempted Him when they would be received 
as the disciples not of his truth but of his loaves, and 
were eager to force upon the Antagonist of all carnalism 
in religion, a carnal crown, and a carnal throne, and 
a carnal policy. The lawyer and the Pharisees 
tempted him, with questions as to the tribute money 
for Caesar, and as to the weightier matters of the law, 
and as to the sanctity of the Sabbath and the temple ; 
and the Sadducee continued the work, on another side, 
with cavils as to the resurrection and the law of di- 
vorce. Satan buffeted Him at the introduction of His 
public ministry ; and, as we gather from the prophetic 
Psalms, at the close of Christ's earthly course, renewed 
his assaults by the most ferocious onset, when " the bulls 
of Bashan, and the dogs" of Hell, bellowed and howled 
around the meek and Atoning Lamb. Describing His 
own career, and bidding farewell to His little flock, he 
called them those who " had continued with Him in 
His temptations ;" — as if all the pathway which they 
had trodden at His side had led through a field, strewn 
with snares and pitfalls at every step. And, besides 
all these, the temptations which Scripture has ex- 
pressly indicated, how constant and severe must have 



168 THE LORD S PRAYER. 

been the pressure of temptation, not explicitly de- 
scribed in the New Testament, against which His hu- 
man nature must have been necessarily called to strug- 
gle, in controlling the exhibition at times of the in- 
dwelling Godhead. Had we been vested with Divine 
Sovereignty and Lordship over twelve legions of angels, 
could our human endurance have brooked, like His, 
the injustice and cowardice of Roman praetors, and the 
insolence of Jewish kinglings, whose faces a glance of 
His Divine Eye could have mouldered into ashes ? 
Had we His Omniscience, could we have locked it 
down, and kept it under restraint, from exposing in 
open day the hidden enormities of the hypocritical 
foes, that confronted and pursued Him along all His 
meek and beneficent way ? Had ive the resources of 
the wide universe at our command, could we have 
brooked the crown of thorns, the sceptre of reed, the 
society of malefactors, and the cross, with all its agony 
and all its ignominy ? 

Scripture and Experience, the history of the world, 
and of the Church, and of the Head of the Church, 
here, all attest the pressure and extent of the danger. 

II. But let us now turn to the second branch of our 
theme, and remember, — tempted as we are continu- 
ally and most severely, — that it is in this tempted but 
overcoming Saviour, that we have an unfailing refuge. 
" He was tempted in all points like unto us, and yet 
without sin, that He might be a merciful and faithful 
High Priest." We come to Him for counsel. And 
He bids us watch and pray that we enter not into 



LECTURE VII. 169 

temptation. We come to Him for sympathy, and He 
can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 
"We come to Him for might, and we can with Paul do 
all things through Christ strengthening us ; " and in 
that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He is 
able to succor them that are tempted."* 

We study the history of our Lord's encounter in the 
wilderness with His enemy and ours, and we see there 
the edge and power of the Scriptures, the word of 
God ; and how still, to demoniac subtlety and plausi- 
bility, and pertinacity, and audacity, the Redeemer 
had ever the one sufficient reply, — " It is written," — 
and the Deceiver was rebuked and foiled. All the 
spears of Hell sought in vain to pierce, and failed even 
to dint that immovable and infallible Record ; and 
even in our weak arm, this shield of Faith can yet 
" quench all the fiery darts of the Wicked One." We 
hear Him, as He is in Grethsemane, say to the disci- 
ples, " Watch and pray that ye enter not into tempta- 
tion," — just as He himself was passing into the con- 
summation and close of His own most fiery tempta- 
tions, or rather was preparing to pass, sorely but 
surely, through them. The Bible well studied — our 
own hearts and Grod's providence carefully observed, 
and the weapon of " all prayer" sedulously plied, — 
these are Christ's prescriptions to His own tried and 
assailed followers. 

2. But it may be said : Might not our Father have 
exempted us from temptation? We answer: our 
birth into the world — our commencement of existence 
* Heb. i. 18. 

8 



170 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

upon an earth that is, according to Grod's word, a state 
of probation, implies trial , and trial to imperfect beings 
in a state of intermingled good and evil, as necessa- 
rily implies temptation. But our Father tries, as the 
physician applies his stethoscope to the diseased 1 angs, 
or his probe to the gaping wound, not to exasperate 
the disease and enhance the injury ; but to prepare 
^e injured part for healing. Satan and the world, and 
/ur own hearts, on the contrary, appeal to the same 
internal maladies and the same external injuries, with 
the spirit of a poisoner brewing for the diseased lungs 
some deadly fumes, or compounding for the wound some 
venomous unguent ; or of an assassin, studying to find 
for the second stroke of his dagger a more deadly aim. 
Temptation, in God's hand, is but the surgeon's probe. 
In Satan's, and man's, it is the brigand's dirk. 

3. And Grod can and does overrule for good, and 
limits within the bounds of the tolerable and the profit- 
able, even these, — the wicked temptations of our own 
nature, and of our fellow-mortals, and of fallen angels. 
Joseph's brethren were murderers in heart. But Grod 
blessed for Joseph's good, for Israel's good, and for 
Egypt's good, the intended fratricide. He is not the 
author of one evil act or thought ; but He permits it, 
and hems it in, just as the architect designs, and the 
walls and ceilings adjusted and adorned by his wis- 
dom, hem in the space, on which the spider stretches 
his web. Satan and sin are as much intruders on 
God's plans, as is the spider an unwarranted visitant 
in the king's palace ; but as the insect cannot, by all 
her spinning and building, alter the architecture of the 



LECTURE VJI. 171 

edifice which she is suffered for a time to infest and 
disfigure, so Satan's malice and art are, all, kept 
within the margin and circuit of (rod's wise designs ; 
and the wrath,- — the sinful, malignant, and temptiug 
wrath of man and of fiend, shall praise the Lord, and 
" the remainder of wrath," which would not so sub- 
serve God's purposes, and could not thus swell His 
praises, — that residue, " will He restrain." 

4. Even here, in this dim and obscure state of 
being, where the power of our vision is comparatively 
so limited, we see that malignity and craft can be 
made to glorify God. The temptations buffet out the 
pride and self-reliance of the disciple, as the rude toss- 
ings of the ocean, and the rough experience of the 
camp, and of the wilderness, may counteract the 
enervating and distorting tenderness of the nursery 
and the home. Temptations drive the Christian to 
the grace and throne of Christ. And the victory of 
the plaintive, and feeble, and mortal disciple over the 
proud, and subtle, and mighty, but fallen archangel, 
— notwithstanding all that archangel's talents and re- 
sources, — illustrates to all worlds the wisdom and 
faithfulness and goodness of God. According to 
promise, " the worm Jacob" is made a brazen " flail 
to thresh the mountains." Our twining, pliant, and 
vine-like weakness, becomes in God's hand, rigid, 
piercing, and irresistible strength. Even here, we can 
see Paul profiting by the messenger of Satan, the 
thorn in his flesh, sent to buffet him. We see Luther 
towering into new boldness of faith, and shooting as 
from the pinnacles of temptation to a loftier height 



172 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the rocket of his testimony ; as, in Christ's strength, 
he goes to encounter the temptations of worldly wrath 
and Satanic hate, at the city of Worms, though, as he 
says, the devils he may meet there be many as the 
tiles on the roofs of its houses. You see Cranmer, 
out of the coil of the temptation that had once 
pinioned and thrown him, rising to a nobler martyr- 
dom, and thrusting resolutely into the blaze the 
guilty hand that had once denied his Lord's truths. 
And, as Luther said, such discipline, rugged and keen 
as it may for the time be, is necessary to Christian 
usefulness. " Prayer, meditation, temptation" said 
that Reformer, make the true minister of Christ. 
Men learn the source of their strength, and the might 
of their Helper, and the love of their Heavenly 
Father ; and " that the way of man is not in himself " 
nor, " is it in him that walketh to direct his steps ;" 
but that our sufficiency is of Grod, and our glorying 
should be only in Him. They know who it is that is 
"able to keep them," as says Jude, " from falling ;" 
or as Peter describes Him, " The Lord knoweth how 
to deliver the godly out of temptation."* They see 
how kind it is that Grod shortens certain days of 
temptation for the elect's sake, or else no flesh living 
could be saved in the age of the world's last and most 
fiery trial ; and how generally, when Satan springs 
the snare, our God, promptly and in the time of need, 
"■' provides with the temptation a way of escape ," and 
the bird evades the fowler's grasp, just as his hand 
was closing upon its quivering wings. Thus sealing 
* 2 Peter ii. 9. 



LECTURE VII. 173 

the lion's jaw, and uptearing the viper's fang, His 
children walk safely through fires which the dew of 
His grace only could quench. And, thus, the bark of 
the perilled voyager sails untroubled over the billows, 
which the oil of His peace has availed to calm into 
speedy and perfect repose. Surely, my brethren, it is 
well for the believer himself, that he should not escape 
all collision with temptation. It gives an energy of 
holy decision to his character, — a rich and transparent 
enamel to his graces, — that he has walked through 
the fiery furnaces, in the train and under the charge 
of one " like unto the Son of Man." And Jesus him- 
self, how was He glorified, — He — the Captain of our 
salvation, in bringing many sons unto glory, in being 
Himself made perfect through sufferings. If angels 
were bidden to adore the Son of Grod, when the Father 
brought Him into the world ; methinks we, who are 
of the race of mankind, — the children of Adam, — 
and he, too, our common ancestor, that first Adam, — 
should especially adore and magnify our Lord, the 
Second Adam, as He is seen led of the Spirit, and led 
of the Father, through temptation. As our great 
progenitor, the author of the Fall, looked down from 
Heaven on his human descendant and Divine Re- 
deemer, methinks the love of that parent transgressor, 
and his wondering, worshipping gratitude, w( uld be 
chiefly excited ; as he saw Christ coming ^ut of the 
wilderness of temptation, pale and faint, but victorious 
over those mightiest seductions, which, in less for- 
midable and less fascinating forms, had made the 
heart of Adam and Eve succumb and yield. And, 



174 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

in Christ's closing death-grapple with the powers of 
Hell, whilst we see how much the body endured, as 
it hung betwixt heaven and earth, could we know 
now, as Christians shall one day know, all that the 
Saviour's soul encountered from Hellish suggestions, 
we should feel, that one of the brightest of the many 
crowns that gleam on His blessed brow, is that which 
commemorates Him as the Trampler upon Tempta- 
tion. If the Hebrew prophetess could cry over the 
scattered forces of the Grentile, " my soul, thou hast 
trodden down strength," what higher energy and what 
wealth of significance has that shout, in our Re- 
deemers lips, as He comes radiant and sinless, out of 
the coils of the Dragon, and with his victor heel 
crushing the adder's brain : " my soul, thou hast 
trodden down strength." Yea, — Amen ! — Thou 
crowned Deliverer ! 

Unaided, and left to their own resources and ex- 
perience, which of all the ransomed hosts has not 
found that " strength" of the Deceiver and the De- 
stroyer too much for his skill and too much for his 
powers? And, from Adam to his last descendant 
among the saints in light, — all erring, — all foiled, — 
all baffled, in the rencounter, — these ransomed ones 
turn their adoring gaze on the One Jesus, Victor in 
his first conflict, Victor in his last, Victor in all, Vic- 
tor i or all, and Victor for evermore : and they hear 
him say, " The god of this world cometh and hath 
nothing, in me." Oh ! is not that Saviour worthy of 
trust, and love, and worship, and service ? May not 
the curse well blister the dinner's lips that speak not, 



LECTURE VII. 175 

and eternal woe, — the Anathema Maranatha, — well 
bind the heart that feels not the love of that Re- 
deemer ? 

In the beautiful language of the Jansenist Q,uesnel, 
our text, then, includes these great truths : " This 
petition we need to utter in the spirit of a sick man, 
imploring and expecting the aid of his physician, 
although at the same time acknowledging that he 
himself deserves to be abandoned by him. The way 
of salvation is a way of humility ; and the grace of 
the Christian is a grace given in conflict. Nothing 
more humbles us and renders us more watchful, and 
drives us more often to the weapons of faith and 
prayer, than this inability to claim for ourselves any 
good, this discovery that we are in ourselves capable 
of all wickedness — this presence of an inward foe 
who leaves us not an instant of repose or of assurance 
— -this depending each moment on a grace that is not 
due and of which we are utterly undeserving. Let us 
adore the wise contrivance of our Grod in the work of 
our salvation, and let us abandon ourselves to Him, 
with a firm confidence that He will not abandon us 
to ourselvesP* 

III. And, now let us pass to the last branch of our 
remarks. Intercession for others is the duty and safe- 
guard of the experienced disciple. We look not merely 
at the nets spread for our own feet, but at the whole 
field of travel to be past, and the whole family in peril 
as they traverse it. When Job, coming out of a long 
and sad conflict, had his final deliverance, and ,J the 
* Quesnel. Matt. vi. 13. 



176 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

turning of his captivity," it was as he prayed for his 
friends who had been misguided. And how compre- 
hensive is the benevolence of such a world-grasping 
prayer, " Lead us not into temptation." It asks, that 
no second Mahomet arise to blind and intoxicate the 
nations. It is a protest against Antichrist of all forms 
— the Antichrist of Rationalism, and the Antichrist of 
Formalism — all that dishonors Grod's truth, and be- 
sots man's soul. 

But if we pray for others that their faith fail not, 
we must not ourselves rush into temptation, or become 
ourselves leaders of those dependent upon us into the 
snares which we deprecate. When we look at the fee- 
ble and glimmering piety of the best, and see how 
much it is but as the bruised reed and the smoking' 
flax ; what need have we to commend it earnestly to 
His care and tenderness who will send new strength 
and coherence into the shattered staff, and who can 
fan into a steady and broad flame what is now but a 
reeking and offensive smoke. But what the temerity 
and guilt of becoming, by recklessness, an occasion of 
stumbling and offence to the feeble and the imperilled. 
The rash word may touch in the heart of another what 
is as a poised and trembling balance, and send the 
quivering purpose earthward and hellward forever. 
"Whilst we are but encouraging carelessness, we may 
be pushing the bark of some thoughtless voyager into 
the eddies of a boiling whirlpool, or sending the inex- 
perience of childhood to pluck a worthless flower on 
^he crumbling edge of a precipice, at whose foot, — 
dizzy fathoms down, — lies many a white skeleton of 



LECTURE VII, 177 

preceding adventurers. They who would not have 
Grod lead them into insuperable temptation, must not 
lead others thither. 

2. Let us remember again that neglect of prayer 
and forgetfulness of Grod invite, and we may say even 
compel Him to avenge His own wronged character, by 
giving us up to the dominion of unresisted appetite 
and irresistible temptation. Thus He tempted Pha- 
raoh, till his obduracy brought on bleeding Egypt its 
ten memorable plagues ; and the valley of the Nile 
smoked beneath the outpoured wrath of Israel's Grod. 
Sin is, in (rod's dominions, one of the most terrible 
avengers of sin. Because the ancient idolaters likeu 
not to retain Grod, as He really was, in their knowl- 
edge, and corrupted His glory and untarnished purity, 
into those foul images of godship which they invented, 
as his rivals and usurping substitutes, — therefore, He 
punished their sin by giving them up to degrade and 
brutify their own nature, as they had degraded and 
vilified and humanized His. The worshippers of bes- 
tial idols became beastly rather than human ; stupid 
as the voiceless statues they hewed ; deaf to Reason 
and Truth as their own carved and painted images; 
and conscienceless and shameless as the calves and 
goats to which they presented incense and oblations ; 
and ridiculous as the apes, and grovelling as the ser- 
pents, which doting Egypt condescended to adore 
" They that make them are like unto them ; so is 
every one that trusteth in them." # 

But we are in no danger of adopting the worship of 

* Psalm ex v. 9 

8* 



178 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the graven image and the molten image? Perhaps 
not in that form, but, even in the pathway of a Chris- 
tian profession, a man may find other roads to the pit, 
than through the cave of Giant Pagan, or past the feet 
of Giant Pope. A booth in Vanity Fair, may be a 
more decorous but not less dangerous abode or resort 
for a Christian pilgrim, than was the shrine of Baal 
and of Ashtaroth to an ancient Hebrew. 

3. We are warranted in praying to be brought 
through temptation, when it is not of our own seek- 
ing, but of God's sending. If we walk without care 
arid without vigilance, if we acknowledge not Grod in 
our ways, and take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion, 
— leaving the Bible unread and the closet unvisited, — 
if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their ancient 
hold upon us. and we then go on frowardly in the way 
of our own eyes, and after the counsel of our own 
heart, we have reason to tremble. A conscience quick 
and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling 
Spirit is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready 
witness and a mysterious guardian against the death- 
ful damps, that, unseen but fatal, cluster around our 
darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to 
lay aside that lamp, and then though the eye see no 
danger and the ear hear no warning, spiritual death 
may be gathering around us her invisible vapors stored 
with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We are 
tempting God, and shall we be delivered ? # 

And if this be so with the negligent professor of re- 
ligion, is it not applicable also to the openly careless 

* Malachi iii. 15. 



LECTURE VII. 179 

who never acknowledged Christ's claims to the heart 
and the life ? "With an evil nature, and a mortal body, 
and a brittle and brief tenure of earth, you are trav- 
ersing perilous paths. Had you Grod for your friend, 
your case would be far other than it is. Peril and 
snare might still beset you ; but you would confront 
and traverse them, as the Hebrews of old did the 
weedy bed of the Red Sea, — its watery walls guard- 
ing their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, 
and the pillar of cloud the rear-guard of their myste- 
rious progress, — the ark and the God of the ark pilot- 
ing and defending them. But without Grod's blessing, 
and committed blindly to Satan's guidance, — return- 
ing prayerless from a prayerless sanctuary to a prayer- 
less home, and seeking a prayerless couch at night, 
and beginning on Monday a prayerless week, which is 
to find on Saturday evening its still prayerless end, — you 
are like a presumptuous and unskilful traveller, pass- 
ing under the arch of the waters of Niagara. The fall- 
ing cataract thundering above you, — a slippery, slimy 
rock beneath your gliding feet — the smoking, roaring 
abyss yawning beside you — the imprisoned winds beat- 
ing back your breath— the struggling daylight coming 
but mistily to the bewildered eyes, — what is the terror 
of your condition, if your guide, in whose grasp your 
fingers tremble, be malignant and treacherous and sui- 
cidal, determined on destroying your life at the sacri- 
fice of his own ? He assures you that he will bring 
you safely through, upon the other side of the Fall. 
And such is Satan. Lost himself, and desperate, he 
is set on swelling the number of his compeers in shame 



180 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

and woe and ruin. If you are his unresisting and 
credulous follower, how infinite the temerity and the 
peril of your dim way. Grod's law is thundering 
above. Hark ! as Deep calls unto Deep, — that flood 
of wrath which deluged once a guilty world — which 
has swept off nations into Hell, is asking over your 
guilty heads from tlfe Dread Throne : "*Lord, how 
long?" And His forbearing Patience is sliding from 
beneath you, as you struggle and stumble blindly and 
breathlessly onward, with Sin for your burden and 
Death for your attendant, 'and Hell for your guide — 
the aids of the Spirit and the light of Conscience and 
Scripture fast failing you, as you rush, unsent and 
tempting Temptation, into caverns that have no thor- 
oughfare but into the boiling abyss. Can you afford to 
be prayerless and. thoughtless, reckless and gay ? The 
cross — the grave — the Judgment-seat — Paradise and 
the pit of the abyss — all reply : No ! - There is no 
peace to the wicked. Awake. Escape for your life. 
Resist the Tempter. Be not ignorant of his devices, 
or you are lost soon and lost forever Lay hold, 
now, and in an agony of haste, on the hope set before 
you in the gospel — even upon Christ Jesus, the Only 
Name given under heaven among men whereby we 
can be saved. Grod grant that such your choice might 
aow be. Amen ! 



" ftat Mwu w frnm wL n 



LECTURE VIII. 

"%ni Mim w from rail." 

Matthew, vi. 18, 

Some would alter the rendering here, and make this 
a prayer against the Evil One, concentrating in the 
person of Satan all our danger. To us, the context 
and the general analogy of the New Testament seem 
in favor, rather, of the present broader expression. 
"When our first parents partook of the forbidden tree, 
they came fatally to know good and evil. They had 
known good before, but thenceforth they knew it in 
contrast with evil, and as alloyed by it. And as good 
includes both holiness and happiness, each of which 
was lost by forsaking Grod, the Fountain of both ; so evil, 
the opposite of good, — comprises the two distinct but 
kindred ideas of guilt and misery, — or of evil as it 
blights our pristine holiness, and of evil as it blasts our 
primitive and proper happiness. Wickedness and 
wretchedness sprang twin-born into our world. The 
brute creation inherited the last without the first. Our 
race incurred both alike. The " evil," against which 
our text is a prayer, combines them both ; the tres- 



184 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

pass which provokes punishment, and also the penalty 
of Woe and Death provoked by and pursuing the tres- 
pass. The petition scans the sorrow of the race, in its 
sources and in its streams : it surveys Satan and his 
confederates, and their evil work, and their evil wages, 
as the last was seen of old in the terrible procession of 
the Apocalypse : " Death, with Hell following after." 
The prayer, thus, is a protest against the pressure of 
Sorrow, as well as against the ravages of Sin. 

This petition, it will be seen, goes beyond that 
which immediately preceded it. The Italian poet,* 
in painting the world of Woe, ranges its several dreary 
mansions along a narrowing and descending volute. 
The lower it sunk, the narrower it grew in his Vision. 
Escape from the influence of Hell is, in the structure 
of the Lord's Prayer, represented by an image the con- 
verse of the poet's. The higher the way of escape 
mounts, the broader it becomes. As by the winding 
pathway and the successive stages of this form of sup- 
plication, we are borne upward, out of the bowels of 
the pit into which the Fall had plunged us, so we find the 
path widening- perpetually as it goes on ascending; 
as we proceed from one grade and platform of prayer 
to another, the subject of request extends itself out 
more and more widely. As we climb the heavenly 
heights, new and broader prospects open around us. 
We begin by deploring sins within ourselves and grope 
about the narrow and dark den of our own hearts ; we 
then expand our petitions by reference to the tempta- 
tions in the circle around and without us ; and finally, 

* Dante. 



LECTURE VIII. 185 

in the words now before us, we look beyond the limits 
of sin in us and temptation around us, to the sorrow 
and pain which may remain, even where sin is re- 
nounced and where temptation is resisted. Beyond 
this state of probation, we look to evil as it shall be 
recompensed and perpetuated in the world of retribu- 
tion, and to yet another world, where all effects and 
traces of evil are effaced from the heart and lot of the 
blessed. Taken in this sense, then, the sentence in- 
cludes a prayer for the repeal of the primal curse on 
man and earth. Grod is good. In the highest sense 
" there is none good but Him." "When He made, at 
first, our world and our kind, he pronounced them, in 
a subordinate sense, good. But now, all blemished 
and defiled, as Earth and Man have become, we come 
back to Him the Author, the Patron, and the Restorer 
of Good, and implore of Him that He would pardon 
and curb, and efface the wrong and the woe, which 
have come in to blot His good handiwork. And how 
widely is the sense of this want spread. The cry has 
gone up for successive centuries, a funeral wail for 
buried Peace and lost Innocence. Like a beggared 
family, whose ancestors were princes, we are haunted 
by sad reminiscences of a Paradise which can no- 
where be found on our earth. If men do not, from the 
blinding power of vanity, see their own sins, they 
groan under their neighbors' depravity and tyranny. 
And, even if they little feel the demerit of sin, either 
in others or in themselves, they are most sensitive bs 
to the effects of it. They fret and rave at its results 
on society, and happiness, and freedom, and knowl- 



186 THE LOltD'S PRAYER. 

edge. The controversies, inventions, recriminations, 
anarchies and revolutions of earth, what are they but 
the wailing cry and restless wandering of wretched- 
ness, — groping, and plunging, and musing, and fight- 
ing its way toward relief? If men do not so generally 
miss Holiness, they do universally and continually 
miss Happiness ; and the cry of the race still is, as in 
the Psalmist's days : " Who will show us any good?" 
Who will quench the heart's burning thirst ? What 
new remedy will staunch the old, immedicable wound ? 
They have lost their clue out of the labyrinth, along 
whose intricate galleries they rush and howl; and 
against whose insurmountable barriers they vainly 
dash themselves. Rejecting Christ and the Spirit, 
how shall they ever come forth ? Let us, my beloved 
hearers, ask the aid of that Saviour, and implore and 
brook the teachings of that Heavenly Guide, as we 
consider, 

I. The cry of our text, stammered, as by the unre- 
generate and heathen world, it universally is : 

II. That cry articulated, as by the penitent and 
Christian, now taught to know the plague of his own 
heart, it is : 

III. That cry answered, as it is, by Grod come down 
to our deliverance. 

I. We said that the world, even though ignorant of 
(rod's Spirit and Word, yet stammered forth this 
prayer. Just as the tongue-tied, the paralytic, or the 
idiotic, maims and distorts his speech, so does the 
worldling, in our own and Pagan lands, fail to speak 
out aright his own felt wants. Is man blest ? All 



LECTURE VIII. 



187 



history, and all observation, and all consciousness, re- 
ply that he is not. What is human life but one long 
conflict with suffering apprehended ; or one prolonged 
combat with suffering endured ? The burden of the 
text is heard in the voice of the new-born babe, send- 
ing back the first draught of air which its tiny lungs 
have made, in wailing, as it lies back on its nurse's 
arm ; and it is found in the death-rattle of 'the gray- 
headed grandsire, breathing his last after well nigh a 
century's experience of life, and its toils and its woes. 
Each contest that sets man against his fellows, — from 
wars like those of Tamerlane or Napoleon, that lit- 
tered a continent with their millions of dead, down to 
the street-fray or the village law-suit; — each statute, 
tribunal, and prison, and penalty ; — each party-gath- 
ering and each party-badge ; — each form, and voice, 
and look of human anguish ; — the pauper's thin and 
trembling hand — the maniac's shriek, and the captive's 
asking eye — the sick man's hollow cheek ;— all the 
diseases that crowd the beds of the hospital, and per- 
plex the physician's skill, and crowd the volumes of a 
medical library ; — all the remedies and diversions that 
seek to while away care or suppress thought — the 
drunkard's bowl, and the song of the reveller, and the 
gambler's dice-box — all the wild utterances of human 
revenge and hate, — Murder scowling on the brother 
whose presence it cannot abide, and Jealousy and 
Envy nibbling at character, and hinting dislike — all 
the ills of childhood, maturity, and age— each bead of 
sweat rolling from the brow of honest toit — each tear 
that falls from the eye, and each sigh that quits the 



188 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

burdened heart — every pang felt, and every complaint 
uttered — but waft upward to God or send around to 
our fellow-man, the one sad, monotonous cry: " De- 
liver US FROM EVIL." 

Each age, each condition, each change, has its pro- 
tests and complaints, that falter out some broken 
syllables of the world's evils, its wrongs and its sor- 
rows. Human government is a protest against the 
evil of anarchy ; and revolution is a protest against 
the evil of tyrannical government. Industry is a pro- 
test against the evil of famine and want ; and amuse- 
ment witnesses against the fatigues of exhausting and 
unremitted industry. The novel, and the opera, and 
the day-dream, are a protest against the insipidity and 
drudgery of every-day life — and suicide, what is it 
but a rash and violent protest against the intolerable 
burden of Earth and Self? Men's traditions of a 
golden age long past, and their hopes, vague but glit- 
tering, of a better day yet to come, are a complaint 
against the unsatisfactory character of the time ac- 
tually present. In the view of the miseries of civi- 
lization, a Rousseau longs for the restoration of bar- 
barian simplicity. Amongst us, — a voyager, sailing 
away from the civilization of the nineteenth century, 
as presented in the comfort and order of our own 
shores, paints for us the glories of some tropical, 
heathen isle, and the beauty of its cannibal Yenuses ? 
and the delights and freedom of a state of society, 
where ycuth has no shame and age no reverence ; 
and the scenes, thus portrayed, awaken the admira- 
tion and envy of some of his civilized readers. And, 



LECTURE VIII. 189 

on the other hand, the savage, admiring and coveting 
the wealth and pomp of civilization, protests against 
his own condition, as unsatisfying, destitute, and 
wearisome. The discontent of the poor and the rest- 
less satiety of the rich,-- -fretfulness and fatigue, sick- 
ness and pain, and poverty and disgrace — what are 
they all, but placards, bidding him that runs to read 
the universal pressure of sorrow and disappointment ? 
Let men forget it or deny it, — let the Pantheist, true 
to his dreadful system, deny that evil is, and insist 
with the poet, that, " Whatever is, is right" and 
make all characters however wicked, and all events 
however wretched, but parts of one good and perfect 
Nature and of one all-pervading, all-moving Grod — 
let the Fatalist, admitting the existence of evil, yet 
deny that any can deliver from it : — Conscience, 
stronger than the Pantheist, complains that Evil is ; 
and Hope, stronger than the Fatalist, cries that deliv- 
erance from evil may be, and must be, and shall be. 

2. And not man alone ; but, in Scripture, the lower 
orders of being as well, are represented as taking their 
part in the great concert of lament and supplication, 
that bewails the pressure and entreats the removal of 
Evil Read Paul's language in the epistle to the 
Romans, as he unveils the whole creation, groaning 
and travailing together for their common redemption - 
and do you not see even the brute and material world 
thus made virtually, to swell before their Maker fch« 
cry of the martyred saints beneath the altar, as thej 
witness against the triumphs of Evil, and exclaim 
before the Just Judge, "0 Lord, how long?" If 



190 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

these subject and lower creatures groan over the fruit 
of our sins, have we any right in glorying over those 
sins, or show we reason in thus boasting of our 
bondage ? 

3. Yes — let the most irreligious and the most pros- 
perous of men, go through the history of his own past 
years, and then looking to the future, ask whether he 
has yet been or is likely to be happy— whether, in the 
failure of early hopes so often frustrated, and in the 
unsatisfactoriness even of those successes which have 
from time to time crowned hopes long cherished, he 
has not been, mutely or loudly, repeating anew the 
lamentations of the Hebrew king who found Triumph, 
and Fame, and Power, but Yanity of vanities, — the 
shadow of a shade ? He may take much of the guilt 
in this matter upon himself, or cast all the burden 
of the blame upon his fellows ; it may be the fault of 
the times, or the country, or the government, or the 
clergy ; but, — one thing, at least, is sure — he has not- 
been able to grasp Bliss, or evade Sorrow. He trav- 
elled, but care went with him. He rested, but sad- 
ness stole on his retirement. The hearse went creak- 
ing past the billiard-room and the theatre. The bowl 
could not drown conscience. Behind the covers of the 
novel glared upon him the stern face of neglected 
duty, and the hard reality of life, not so to be quelled 
and gladdened. The oroad leaves of the Sunday 
newspaper could not shut out all view of the fiery 
Sinai, of the death-bed, and the judgment-seat. He 
wooed Pleasure ; but Weariness and Remorse came 
as her train-bearers. He climbed for honors. Hardly 



LECTURE VIII. 191 

won, the laurel was barren, and it was soon wilted. 
He dug for gold, for the wise man had said, " Money 
answereth all things ;" but when it came up, bright 
and plenteous, it was found to his astonishment, that 
even it might be, as Paul long since called it, " a root 
of all evilP 

Or, if your own lot was comparatively easy, you 
were stunned and pierced with the sounds of distress ; 
and gazed loathingly on the ulcers of Suffering and 
Guilt in society around, until you have longed for a 
lodge in the wilderness. Have you looked inward for 
solace and repose, and vowed that " your mind should 
be your kingdom ?" But as you thoughtfully studied 
the teachings of conscience, and let in, upon the dim 
cavern of Meditation, the light of Scripture and 
Judgment, were you easy ? Did not Thought bring 
Alarm ? Did you not detect arrears of promises, and 
vows, and duties, long forgotten ; — and did not the 
Law, as you looked, become broader, and its curse 
darker ? And did not your own obedience to the just 
demands of conscience and God, seem more and more 
shrivelled and insufficient, the more patiently and the 
more thoroughly you considered them ? Where are 
you ? Shut up to the need of a Deliverer. But how, if 
left to Nature's teachings, shall you seek him ? Wliere 
is He ? — Who is He ? — Where is the Advocate even 
competent to state my case in all its dark and vast 
fulness : where the Helper to relieve it ? 

II. The believer, penitent and taught of God's good 
Spirit, offers this prayer articulately. 

1. Taught of God's word, he traces back all evil, 



192 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

social and physical, to moral evil, and finds the guilt 
of its introduction into our world resting on his race, 
and of its continuance resting on himself. He is not 
insensible, more than his fellows, to the keenness of 
sorrow, and bereavement, and want, and perplexity. 
He does not, with the pride of the Stoic, deny that 
poverty and sickness and loneliness are evils ; nor with 
the grossness of the Epicurean does he seek the alle- 
viation of these evils by sinking to the level of the 
brute, and rivalling the beasts that perish in their de- 
grading joys. No social reform, however successful, — 
no political revolution, however sweeping and thor- 
ough, — can meet all the wants and aspirations of his 
nature. The Phalanstery may provide for the kitchen, 
and the laundry, and the workshop ; but is it a com- 
plete provision for the entire man, unless it takes 
thought for the aching heart and the burdened con- 
science,— for the funeral and cemetery, and the awful 
realities that lie beyond even that dread bourne ? 
He has a conscience that must be purified; and an 
immortality of which he cannot strip himself^ and that 
must be made hopeful and blissful. As a being, spir- 
itual as well as corporeal, — the one part of his nature 
indestructible by death, whilst the other moulders at 
the touch of decay, — he will seek first the first things ; 
the accusations of conscience must first be appeased, 
and its monitions be heeded above the cries of appetite 
and the pleadings of interest. And the well-being of 
this immortal spirit, that feels so deeply and lives for 
eternity, must be secured, come what may of the mor- 



LECTURE VIII. 193 

lal tenement that houses it, but for a few earthly 
years. 

2. But who shall satisfy for past offences, and who 
uproot the strong tendencies for ill within him ? Is 
there help in his fellows ? They may aid and instruct 
and cheer him onward. The Christian church, — like 
travellers in arctic climes, watching to detect the first 
evidence of frost seizing the face of a fellow-traveller, 
its unconscious victim, and applying promptly the 
remedy, — may aid him in watching against the frost 
of spiritual death, that unsuspected would else steal 
upon him. But they cannot make the atonement, or 
work the regeneration which he needs. He sees, in 
the false religions of the world, the endurance of phys- 
ical evil represented, as if it were a compensation and 
set-off for the guilt of moral evil. The wheels of Jug- 
gernaut's car roll on ; and the crushed limbs and spout- 
ing blood of his worshippers and victims, are regarded 
as an atonement of their sins. He finds not, in Scrip- 
ture, nor in conscience, any reason to content himself 
with such pleas as the basis of pardon. May he look 
higher than earth and man ? He must : for man and 
earth cannot solve his doubts or quell his fears. He 
is dying — who shall unsting death ? He is to live and 
bide the doomsday ? Oh who shall give him acquittal 
there ? Grod could, but will he? To Him he resorts. 
Whilst the worldly and the Pagan look to secondary 
causes and to created helpers, he does not indeed scorn 
or undervalue the worldly benefits, — won for human 
want and human woe by the cares and sacrifices of the 
patriot, the inventor, the sage, the legislator, and the 

9 ^ 



194 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

reformer ; but he accepts them as but small instal- 
ments of the coming Millennium — he regards them all 
as but the outriders and forerunners of a greater De- 
liverer — -the earnests and intimations of a mightier 
and vaster boon, that neither patriot nor reformer of 
mere human mould can ever bring. The world's de- 
liverers, if really such, are but heralds, filling the val- 
°ys and levelling the hills, and making plain the way 
.i the Lord, before his face. Tf the world's sovereigns 
and conquerors, though promising to be deliverers, 
prove but disturbers and oppressors, they " overturn 
and overturn" in mad and blind anarchy, " until He 
whose right it is to reign" comes in their steps. The 
believer approaches to Grod, taught in this prayer the 
proper order of his requests to his Father on high. 
"Whilst the world, then, " weary themselves in the fire 
for very vanity," looking for deliverance from temporal 
evil ; he asks first the forgiveness and remission of 
sin within, — then victory over temptation, or sin with- 
out, as working on ihe sinfulness within, — and then 
finally, and as the fitting sequel of these preliminary 
and preparatory processes, the utter removal of all evil, 
whether it be personal or social, physical or moral, 
temporal or eternal. His first cry is, " Take away all 
iniquity." His first quest is for the kingdom of Grod 
and his righteousness, and then, that all things needful 
be added thereto. 

Ill And how will this petitioner fare before the 
Majesty of Heaven ? The appeal will be answered, 
for He who taught the articulate cry for deliverance 
from evil, in the form of prayer now before us, hath 



LECTURE VIII. 195 

all power in heaven and on earth. He stooped from 
the throne of equal and full Divinity, and came 
amongst us to draft for our use this petition ; and 
now ascended on high, He lives to urge it with con- 
stant efficacy. The parchment on which he indited 
it was bleached to snowy whiteness in his own aton- 
ing blood. Once that parchment, the inner record of 
Conscience, and the outer record of Judgment, con- 
tained a handwriting of ordinances that was against 
us. He nailed it to his cross. The streaming gore 
of that dread oblation cancelled the indictment. His 
rent side and bursting heart made full atonement for 
our vast and countless offences. We needed the Re- 
demption ; and He, as the only competent victim, 
came to achieve it. The writing now inscribed on 
the page of Scripture, and on the believer's conscience, 
is a full pardon, a charter of celestial citizenship and 
everlasting salvation. 

2. But besides this cancelment of the evil past, 01 
sin committed by us, and of the evil of punishment 
consequent and due upon that guilt, there was needed 
a change of nature. An evil heart would be wretched, 
and would renew fresh wickedness and earn fresh 
wretchedness, were an uncursed Paradise made again 
its home. To pardon us without regenerating us, and 
to change the world around to our liking, would only 
leave it a new Eden for the range of a new Satan — 
that Satan, self. Earthly reformers have overlooked 
this ; they have busied themselves about outer cir- 
cumstances, and not the inner character. They have 
hoped to cure the dropsied limb by the application ex- 



196 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

ternally of the bandage and compress. They have 
prescribed for the inner aneurism of the heart the 
mere skin-deep lotion and wash of social ameliorations 
and outward decencies. They have found the Upas 
tree of human depravity radiating death over a wide 
circuit, and shooting its roots and filaments into all 
the laws and lore and usages, — the joys and toils and 
scenes of earth, and dropping poison on all beneath its 
shade ; and these heedless and sanguine philanthro- 
pists have said, It needs more compost in the soil, and 
a neater and taller fence. "Whitewash its trunk and 
top its boughs and tie upon it a few grafts of philoso- 
phy and almsgiving, and order, and all will be well. 
But Divine Reason spoke out, by the lips of our Lord 
in His Sermon on the Mount, " Make the tree good, 
and his fruit good." Divine Justice brandished the 
keen axe and laid it threateningly at the root of this, 
as of every tree not bearing good fruit ; and Hell kin- 
dled its fires in joyous expectation of the new fuel 
soon to feed its flames. You must change the trunk 
and root, if you will truly and permanently alter the 
fruitage. And in consequence of Christ's atonement, 
and in continuance of its ransoming work, came down 
the Regenerating and Sanctifying Spirit. Soon, where 
of old was the Upas tree, blooms now the plant of 
righteousness — the tree of the planting of the Lord's 
right hand, fanned by the airs, and watered by the 
dews, and warmed by the rays of Grod's own ceaseless 
and sufficient grace ; and the prophet's glad words are 
accomplished : " Instead of the thorn shall come up 
the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the 



LECTURE VIII. 197 

myrtle-tree : and it shall be to the Lord for a name, 
for an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off."* 
Well may it be such a sign to the glory evermore of 
His vastest Mercy and mightiest Grace. 

The petition preceding this, for pardon of sin, had 
respect to the work of the Son who purchases it. The 
petition against Temptation, may perhaps be regarded 
as having respect' especially to the work of the Holy 
Spirit, who inclines the heart to good, and fences it 
against the Tempter and his arts. But the petition 
of our text groups together the Son and the Comforter, 
and implores, as it were, that with joined hands they 
uplift and rescue our forlorn nature, that lies bleeding 
and prone, and helpless, at the mercy of Sin, and 
Death, and Hell, except as thus upraised and healed, 
and ransomed and regenerated. 

The world sees, in cases of political mismanage- 
ment, the need of a reformation that shall touch prin- 
ciples ; and not stop short in mere outer details, the 
leaves and twigs of the tree. It calls for radical re- 
form. But the gospel is the only true and radical re- 
formation on earth. It goes into the heart, the root 
of the character, and the fountain of the life ; as that 
character develops and that life displays itself, in this 
world not only, but in the world also beyond the grave. 
Men see in the things of the body the absurdity of giv- 
ing one boon, without the addition of another which 
may be requisite to the enjoyment of the first. They 
see, that the gift of money to a starving man would 
be valueless, without access to a market wherein to 
* Isaiah lv. 13. 



198 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

expend his new store, and buy his bread ; and that a 
feast would be but wretched torture to a man suffer- 
ing under a lock-jaw ; that to make the banquet a 
boon you must remove the intervening malady — which 
prevents your pensioner's enjoyment of the dainties. 
Henry the VIII. of England, brutally threatened, — 
when told that the Pope of Rome would send a cardi- 
nal's hat to Bishop Fisher, — that the prelate should 
not have a head to wear it ; but what are the goods 
and reforms of earth, but crowns for the beheaded, and 
but feasts for the victims whose lips are sealed against 
food, — if the soul be not first pardoned and sancti- 
fied ? 

3. Yet after, in its due order, the conversion of the 
heart has first taken place, and such conversions 
have occurred numerously and widely among the na- 
tions, the word of (rod does hold out to us, even on 
earth, the prospect, that there shall be, then, in due 
succession, great social and terrene changes. But the 
reforms of these Millennial days will be ushered in, — 
they will be made possible, and be rendered perma- 
nent, — by personal changes and individual conversions, 
that shall go before them. A time, then, comes when 
Right shall under God's heaven spell Might ; when 
Truth shall be acknowledged as Power, and no longer 
hooted as Folly or prisoned as Treason and Blasphemy; 
and the many of earth, instead of being as now rest- 
less and repining dupes and victims, the ignorant and 
the vicious, and the wretched, shall be the meek, and 
the wise, and the happy ; when the high and the 
great shall be also the holy of the nations, and the 



LECTURE VIII. 199 

kingdom arid the greatness of the dominion under the 
whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints 
of the Most High Grod. But as a mine, inundated and 
abandoned, must be emptied of its water ere its hidden 
ores can be extracted, so the world must unlearn the evil 
of sin ere it can unlearn the evil of suffering ; the power 
of sin and religious error, falsehood and wickedness, 
must be exhausted, ere the full capacity of the race for 
enjoyment, and achievement, and knowledge, here can 
be exhibited. Mankind must take to the Second 
Adam, — the Lord from Heaven, — the work of wreck 
and ruin made by the First Adam, — author and inlet 
of the Fall, in order that the work may be undone and 
the wrong repaired ; ere the curse can be lightened, 
and society be what reformers and revolutionists wish 
it, or human nature have its own indistinct yearnings 
satisfied, and its deep cravings met. The eye and the 
prayer must be uplifted to Heaven, before it can be 
well with man on the earth. 

4. But, even beyond the Millennium, lies a greater 
glory and a more awful state. It is the eternal world. 
And there only will this prayer in its wondrous fulness 
be granted. Till the grace of Grod give back the body 
ransomed from the last trace of corruption and evil, — 
till Heaven receive that earthly framework, renewed 
and reunited to the sinless and exulting spirit, — the 
long and widely ascending cry of this petition — a pe- 
tition going indistinctly up from Nature, and from 
Society, and with more distinctness from the earthly 
Church — will not have received its full response. 
Whilst on earth Christ did not scorn. the relief of bodily 



200 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

and sensuous miseries, He fed hunger and healed dis« 
ease. He rescued Peter from drowning, and restored 
Lazarus from corruption. He preserved Malchus from 
a permanent maiming, and guarded with his dying 
breath his own mother from homelessness and want. 
He provides, then, for lesser mercies; and can remove 
all lighter as well as the greater evils. In the present 
state of human existence, however, he leaves many 
bodily disadvantages and earthly discomforts, which 
are the results and plagues of moral evil, in order by 
these to try, and discipline, and perfect his own chil- 
dren. But over this robe of worldly good, thus as yet 
tattered and scanty, He throws even here the all- 
adorning and perfect vesture of his Imputed Righteous- 
ness and Overruling Providence. The day comes when 
even these lesser evils shall have, also, all disappeared, 
in the case of his people. Arftl what a " Deliverance" 
will that be, hailed by the jubilant church in the day 
of the Resurrection and Last Judgment, when the 
Lamb shall present that church, his bride, to the 
Father, unblemished and complete in all the radiance 
of holiness and felicity, and of the immediate and 
beatific vision, " without spot or wrinkle" — the New 
Jerusalem — heiress of Heaven and daughter of (rod. 

5, But, on the other hand, if we refuse instruction 
and continue to dread and deprecate lesser evils, but 
choose and clasp the greater and fatal evils of sin — if 
we hate (rod, and his Christ, and his Book — what 
must soon be our lot and our remorse ? Some, instead 
of seeking rescue from evil, wish and hope deliverance 
by it ; or, like the Antinomian, abusing the doctrines 



LECTURE VIII. 201 

of grace, would expect and demand deliverance in sin. 
But Christ came not to patronize evil but to extermi- 
nate it, and to save His people from their sins ; not to 
embalm them in their spiritual death, but to imbue 
and quicken them with a new and celestial life. To 
the long litany of deprecation, urged by his penitent 
and believing people, He has a full and gracious re- 
sponse. But his foes, dying in their sins, and wish- 
ing no deliverance from evil, are delivered over unto 
their own wishes, and given up to evil — to the Evil 
One, merciless and murderous — to their own evil asso- 
ciates, " hateful and hating one another" — and to 
their own evil recollections, and evil consciences, and 
evil bickerings, and this for all eternity. 

The thought of damnation is one of overpowering 
terror : but the sinner dreading the award may yet 
" love damnation in its causes well" whilst recoiling 
from its consequences. The woes that surround and 
burden you, are earnests of that dread and desperate 
state. A few more repulses of the one Sovereign and 
most benign Redeemer — a few more resortings to the 
empirical remedies of earth, its self-righteousness, its 
procrastination, its heresies, its vain amusements, its 
covetousness, and worldliness — may seal the disease 
of sin invincibly and irremediably upon you. Did you 
ever enter the chamber of the dying in his coma- 
tose slumber, drawing apoplectic breath, and now 
dozing to his death? Such, sinner, a little continu- 
ance of this present carelessness may render thy stale, 
far as Heaven and eternity are concerned, — the repose 
of a spiritual apoplexy, which shall be past curing. 

9* 



202 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

It seems repose. It is ruin. Cry to the Mighty — cry 
to the Merciful, whilst there is yet hope of escape and 
recovery, that He would rid thee of evil — or evil will 
else rob thee of Heaven, and give thee over to the 
second death, to the will of Satan, to the tooth of Re- 
morse, and the barbs of Despair, and to the eternal 
burnings of Grod's fiery law. " Who can dwell with 
eternal burnings ?" And who, then, shall misspend 
the one brief term of probation left to escape those 
fires ; who slight the Only Name given under Heaven 
among men whereby we can be saved ? 

But, bought with that costly ransom, and upborne 
to the celestial home on the wings of that mighty deliv- 
erance, which the Redeeming Son and the Renewing 
Spirit accomplish, how blessed will be the spectacle, 
as surveyed from the heavenly heights, — of the way 
in which you have been led — of the grace that pursued, 
and reclaimed, and sustained you — and of Evil now 
utterly and eternally past. What deliverance can be 
once compared with this ? 



u $n tjiittf 10 \\t kittgfrmn, rntfr tjj* pun, ebb tjjt 



LECTURE IX, 

" fm ijrtitt is tji* kingtarai, unit % pmnjr, nun tjji 
glnnj, fnttDir. frora." 

Matthew, vi. 13. 

At the close of the seventy-second Psalm, we read 
the inscription: " The prayers of David, the son of 
Jesse, are ended." We naturally feel an anxiety to 
learn how they ended, and what was the fitting and 
crowning close of his prayers, in the case of one who 
so delighted, so abounded, and so prevailed in the work 
of supplication as did the sweet singer of Israel — the 
man who elsewhere says of himself, "I give myself 
unto prayer ;" or as it reads in the original, with the 
omission of the connecting words supplied by our 
translators, " I — prayer :" — Petition is the breath of 
my life, the very solace, and stay, and sum of my ex- 
istence. And when we turn to the verse immediately 
preceding that inscription^ we read : " And blessed be 
his glorious name forever : and let the whole earth be 
filled with his glory. Amen and Amen." The sum, 
the seal, — the consummation and the crown of the 

* Psalm lxxii. 19. 



206 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

devout breathings of a long and busy, and religious 
lifetime, was an acknowledgment of the Divine glory : 
—and he breathes out his soul and his life, as it were, 
in the devout vow — the absorbing desire — that the 
entire globe might be swathed in the effulgence of 
that glory and majesty, and like a mirror, burnished 
again from its long accumulation and incrustation of 
dust, flash brightly back the full splendor of the un- 
veiled G-odhead. 

How, in this matter, do the prayers of David and 
of David's greater Son, the Lord our B,edeemer, co- 
incide as to the theme and tone of their last sen- 
tences. Each form of supplication dwells on the 
glory of Grod, as its final thought, the crowning 
chapiter of the column, and the pinnacle that gives 
finish and symmetry to the pyramid. We know that 
some versions of the New Testament, and some manu- 
scripts of the original, omit entirely the sentence 
wdiich forms our text. But against this omission, and 
in favor of retaining the words as a genuine portion 
of the Lord's Prayer, some stress should surely be 
laid on the argument, in its favor, from the similar 
burden so often found appended to other prayers of 
Holy Writ. The analogy of the supplications of 
Scripture is, we think, most manifestly for the text as 
it stands. Add to this its natural and close cohesion 
with the whole precedent portion of the Lord's Prayer, 
with which, as Calvin has remarked, it so aptly fits. 
Remember, again, that the Syriac, the oldest of all 
the versions of the New Testament, has preserved the 
clause. And lastly, observe that if the hand of for- 



LECTURE IX. 207 

gery had been busy in this matter with the New Tes- 
tament, and had here made an addition to Matthew, 
it seems unaccountable why the same temerity should 
have hesitated to make the change uniform, by ap- 
pending it also to the form in Luke. On the other 
hand, the corrupt changes which have been made in 
some early transcripts of the New Testament have 
often so evidently proceeded on the principle of 
making the phrases and incidents of one gospel repeat 
exactly those of another, that we can very easily con- 
ceive why an early transcriber, not finding our closing 
paragraph in Luke, would be, in this spirit of rash 
and conjectural tampering to make symmetrical what 
(rod had left various, induced to omit it here, although 
the evangelist, Matthew himself, the original writer, 
had inserted it in his gospel. But if it be asked, why 
should Christ, on the one occasion, use this unabridged 
form, and, on the other, described by Luke, repeat the 
prayer with such an omission, it seems a sufficient 
reply, thai Christ did often reiterate, in substance, at 
a new scene and to another auditory, maxims and 
parables and lessons, which he had elsewhere, at 
greater or at less length, given to another assemblage 
of hearers. Seeking not, like man who is eager for 
the praise of inventive genius, the reputation of con- 
tinued originality and novelty in his teachings, he did 
not shun to repeat " line upon line" where the edifi- 
cation and salvation of his hearers were thus to be at- 
tained. The form of the Prayer, in Matthew, was 
evidently presented to the indiscriminate mass of his 
hearers; and amongst these were not ouly friends and 



208 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

disciples, but the prejudiced also, and the hostile, and 
those little advanced in the knowledge of Himself and 
His mission, and His kingdom. For their use He 
gave the form, closing with that general appeal to the 
character and rule and rights of Grod, which they 
were already prepared to receive, from similar lan- 
guage in the Old Testament. The other form in 
Luke was given to his disciples, and wanting this 
final argument with Grod, would leave, apparently, in 
their minds the impression of a vacuity, — a signifi- 
cant and emphatic break in the current of prayer — ■ 
which the instruction elsewhere given to them, to 
ask all of the Father in His, the Messiah's Name, 
would enable them to fill up in the appropriate man- 
ner. For that instruction explicitly to be given even 
to his disciples, it was not yet the fitting time, until 
the wonders of His crucifixion and resurrection should 
have fully expounded, and finally and unequivocally 
sealed, His claims as the Christ of Grod, and as the 
Way through whom only any come to the Father. 

Yet another reason might be suggested for the vari- 
ance and diminution of the form, as the evangelist 
Luke has presented it. Foreseeing how easily, how 
early and how universally, his own churches would 
yield to the tendency to employ the Lord's Prayer in 
that very formalism which He had reprehended, — He, 
the Head of the Church, and the Hearer of Prayer — 
might, in the fragmentary shape and by the minor 
variations which He, on the last occasion, gave to the 
formulary, have meant to record, as by implication 
and emphatic intimation, his anticipatory protest 



LECTURE IX. 209 

against such idolatry of the form. He might thus 
choose to show, that the words were not given as the 
rigid mould of all prayer ; but as sentences to be in- 
laid in the ever new and varying utterances of the 
One free and unerring Spirit, who maketh intercession 
for the saints, and in them, according to the mind of 
God. He might thus be reminding us how we do 
well to eye the tone and current of thought, rather 
than the exact letter of our petitions ; and that we 
make it our chief anxiety, after the model so be- 
queathed, and aided by the Living Intercessor, the 
Holy Ghost — " who takes the things of the Son and 
shows them unto us," — to present at His unchanging 
throne, supplications unchanged and uniform in their 
temper, however varied and multiform in their shape 
and utterances. 

These preliminary remarks, as to the genuineness 
of this portion of the Lord's Prayer, have prepared 
our way now to examine it ; and may the Spirit of 
all grace be implored and received, to aid us as we 
consider, 

I. The force of this sentence, as a plea : 

II. Its beauty, as the close of our Lord's Prayer. 

I. As a plea, it well might have prevailing power 
with God, for it took hold not on human helpers or 
patrons, but upon His strength — His own divine 
strength to make peace with Him. It fetched its 
motives, mighty with our (rod, not from human weak- 
ness or human wretchedness even, much less from the 
presumptuous and counterfeit plea of human merit: 
but it found its exhaustless and availing arguments 



210 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

in the depths of the Divine Nature. "When David 
offered his rich preparations for the Temple, he said 
devoutly to his Grod, " of thine own have we given 
Thee"^ — " This store — is all thine own." And here 
David's Son and Lord, and Redeemer, in rearing 
within our souls a holier and more enduring Temple 
for the divine habitation, bids us virtually to repeat 
the patriarch's plea for the acceptance of our offer- 
ings : " Of thine own" — the utterances of Thine own 
"Wisdom, and the plans of Redemption framed by 
Thine own grace, and subserving Thine own glory — 
"have we given Thee:" and all "this store" of good 
asked, of pleas urged, of hopes cherished, and of con- 
quests over sin and self, and Satan, won already, and 
yet to be won, — " is all Thine own." From thy 
"glory" of goodness it first originated: and to the 
"glory" of that goodness it shall everywhere and 
evermore redound. 

In its first cluster of petitions the Lord's Prayer 
had therefore referred to the end of man's being, 
which was to be the service of his Parent and King. 
In its next cluster of supplications, it had grouped, in 
regular order, the means of man's being and well- 
being — the food that should feed his body, and the 
grace that should restore his soul. And the accom- 
plishment of these ends, and the bestowment of these 
means, are now, in this last and urgent plea, presented 
as being rooted alike, in the glory and royalty of the 
Grod at whose footstool we kneel. 

1. Let us think on the varied classes that crowded 

* 2 Chron. xxix. 14, 16. 



LECTURE IX. 211 

around the Saviour as he delivered this discourse. 
There was the Roman centurion, perchance, proud of 
the wide swoop of his country's eagles, and of the 
huge and rich prey, the wealth and lands on which 
those birds of imperial rapine were feeding. To him, 
" the kingdom" was not God's — it was Ccesar's. 
There was the pliant and unprincipled Herodian, 
ready to lavish all idolatrous homage upon the Idu- 
mean usurper of David's throne ; and assuredly in his 
eyes, long as Herod gave place, and pay, and titles, and 
whilst he beheaded enemies, and fed his parasites, the 
kingdom was Herod's. And there was the Pharisee 
whom to use an expressive metaphor of Augustine's, 
pride had so swollen that his eyes were closed, and to 
him in his spiritual blindness the kingdom was Israel* s. 
Grod, in his view, had mortgaged Himself perpetually 
to the carnal descendants of Abraha m. But not so ; 
for the Roman emperor, and the Jewish king, and the 
Jewish people, were sinners ; they were dying, under 
(rod's curse of guilt and death — they were not one 
king, but many kings — not one kingdom, but several 
and rival royalties, and they were at best but kings 
of subject mortals. The dominion truly belonged to 
the Blessed and Only Potentate, who set them up — 
princes and people — and put them down, at His Sov- 
ereign pleasure, — the King of Kings and Lord of 
Lords. 

And are there no like mistakes in our times and in 
our land? Have you never heard — perchance spoken 
boastingly yourselves, of the sovereignty of the people I 
Aye, within the proper limits of their prerogative as- 



212 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

sert and preserve it. But over Conscience, and Scrip- 
ture, and God, they have and can have no rights and 
no rule. You talk of the terrors and powers of public 
opinion, but can it exact on the truth of God, and upon 
the dominion of the True God ? No. The wind that 
swept over you, and the ground your feet at this in 
stant press, witness that man made them not. Our 
bodies were not framed by our own skill or power. 
" For He is our Grod, and we are the people of his pas- 
ture and the sheep of his hand." 5 * When, then, the 
laws or usages of man trench on the authority of Grod, 
the path of duty is plain, and the law of duty impera- 
tive. But to come nearer, are there not in every man's 
heart the workings of an idolatrous self-will, that, set- 
ting up its own inclinations and its own ill-understood 
interests, as the first object of regard, virtually claims 
to set its mouth against the heavens, and says, " Mine 
is the kingdom ;" and to check and crucify the inter- 
nal traitor, how hard is the struggle, and how earnest 
must be the vigilance, and how long and ardent the 
prayer. How often need we to reconquer, as it were, 
in the experience of our treacherous hearts, this first 
principle, that God is the only rightful and competent 
and trustworthy Ruler of our world and of ourselves. 

— " And the power." There were Sadducees, per- 
haps, among the auditory who thronged the mountain- 
side where Jesus of Nazareth was preaching, or some 
Roman or Greek scholar, a disciple of the Stoic phi- 
losophy ; and these men, whilst they would allow to 
the Nazarene, that God's was the kingdom, would yet 
* Psalm xcv. V. 



LECTURE IX. 213 

claim that marl's was the power of making, unaided 
as it were of Divine grace, his own destiny. And 
are there not similar usurpations on the Divine Rights 
now ? We hear much of the powers of Nature. "We 
fear to some minds it is but an awkward and irreve- 
rent form of speech, intended to shut Grod out of their 
thoughts, and to put Science into the place of Deity. 
We hear repeated, again, the adage of one of the 
world's great men, that knowledge — human knowl- 
edge — is Power ; and so, indeed, it is within its own 
restricted province; but is it power to subdue and 
cancel sin, — power to earn Heaven ? No. The in- 
tellect of a Lucifer, stored with all an archangel's at- 
tainments in knowledge, would not clothe him with 
the power to command Peace for himself, or bestow 
Happiness on others. And when w T e come to the great 
work of doing God's will, have we in ourselves power 
even to think a good thought, except as we acknowl- 
edge and invoke His assistance ? And what is the 
power of the statesman, the scholar, the poet, the con- 
queror, the discoverer, but a very limited and much 
refracted ray thrown off from Grod, the source and cen- 
tre of all power, and left with man but ivhere Grod 
sees fit, and when He sees fit, and whilst He sees fit, 
—coming, fading, and going as the Blessed and Only 
Potentate commands ? And with what holy urgency 
does the experienced and humble Christian present this 
before Grod in his prayers. Called to serve his genera 
tion and to look to his own salvation, what is he bu 
as he hangs, habitually and implicitly, on the siistair 
ing arm of his Almighty Father ? 



214 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

— " And the glory forever." There were Pharisees 
too, proud and self-adoring, among Christ's hearers. 
They were zealous in proclaiming (rod's kingdom and 
poioer, but how did they defraud him of His glory. 
Their virtues were their own ; their prayers and alms 
and services, were hoarded and reckoned as obligations 
that brought Heaven into debt. But Grod is jealous 
d£ His honor ; and His glory, He will not give to an- 
other. And .the system of faith, — no matter how deco- 
rous and respectable its adherents, — that is not based 
on the admission of God's claim to the entire glory of 
Tian's salvation, is a perilous and ruinous system. 
When Israel had just wrought the atrocious offence of 
forging and adoring the golden calf, and Moses inter- 
ceded that Jehovah would not exterminate them, he 
pleaded the reproach that the heathen would fling on 
God's character; and when Joshua, with Achan in 
his camp, and his host routed by the men of Ai, sought 
God for counsel and help, he asked, " What wilt Thou 
do with thy Great Name ?•" Not Profanity only, but all 
Vain-glory, that may so cling even to the regenerate 
soul, and against which even Paul needed to be 
guarded by the thorn in the flesh — Vain-glory we say, 
as well as coarse Profanity, is here denounced and ab- 
jured. The victors of the world shall cast their crowns 
at the feet of the Lamb ; and all glory and honor is 
ascribed to Him who sitteth upon the throne, by the 
inhabitants of the New Jerusalem. But to slay this 
self-glorying is probably one of the hardest, and one of 
the last, attainments of the Christian on earth. The 
mass of men perish by self-will, setting up their king- 



LECTURE IX. 215 

dom against God's. Others who escape that snare, 
and allow God to be the King, yet claim for them- 
selves a spiritual power and independence which ruins 
them. But it is possible for us to evade this snare 
also, and yet, like Herod, to take to ourselves the 
homage that is God's, and incur the doom of the pro- 
fane and smitten king. As Leighton has said: " The 
crowns and sceptres of earth hang at God's footstool ;" 
and this is true not only of all political rulers, but of 
all forms of influence and honor and good amongst 
men. From God it came, and to Him its honors must 
return ; or those who intercept the honor embezzle 
from their Sovereign and rob the exchequer of Heaven 
— an exchequer, the pillage of which never escaped 
detection and condemnation. 

II. We have now reached the second branch of our 
subject, the beauty of the sentence forming our text, 
as constituting the close of the Lord's Prayer. It is 
observable, then, that the opening and the closing 
thought of the prayer fit into one another. Next after 
the appeal made to the Lord on high as our Father, 
comes the request, Hallowed be Thy Name. The 
closing branch of our text is an appeal for God to hear 
and grant, " for thine is the glory." The Name of 
God hallowed, and the glory of God extolled, are but 
variations of the same great truth. In this respect is 
seen, then, the ground of Leighton's remark, that 
prayer, " like the heavens, hath a circular motion" 
and that, beginning from God, it returns to God again. 
All devout aspirations and all celestial hopes in the 
heart and nature of man, if genuine and enduring, 



216 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

have come first from the Heavens, whither they are 
finally to climb. Of them it may be said, that they 
resemble the waters as described by Solomon. The 
clouds are filled from the sea, and into that ocean their 
bursting treasures are again poured back ; or if break- 
ing on the land, they seek the rivers, and along those 
channels reach again their parent depths from whence 
they were first evaporated. If your closet seems a 
place of near and filial converse with (rod, it is not so 
much your devotion that has sought the Father, as the 
Father's glowing love that has won and kindled your 
devotion. "He first loved us." The missionary, and 
pastor, and evangelist, the pious friend and the profi- 
table volume, and the seasonable visit, and the word 
coming home to the heart, did you good but as Grod 
gave, and guided, and enforced them ; and they will 
continue to bless and cheer you, only as you give to 
Grod again, in their use, the glory of their success. 
For the great object of our existence, and of all crea- 
tion, is the provision as it were of mirrors raying back 
the effulgence of the Divine greatness, and the up- 
springing of flowers that shall bloom and glow in the 
rains of His mercy and the clear sunlight of His good- 
ness. To know, and love, and to resemble, and to 
adore Him, is the great errand of my entrance on this 
wide Universe of being. Aught less than that, and 
lower than that, is treason to my own dignity ; and an 
undue bed war f men t of the angelic proportions with 
which Eden clothed us, and to which Calvary restores 
us. But try by this simple test, — the glory of Grod, — ■ 
many of our plans, and pursuits, and how does their 



LECTURE IA. 217 

pettiness and guiltiness start to light. "Whereas, on 
the other hand, performed in His sight and for His 
sake, the menial service becomes ennobled; and want, 
and pain, and shame, and death, incurred for His sake, 
Jose their original nature, and shine in the radiance 
of the Being for whom they were borne, and to whom 
they are devoted. 

2. Observe, again, in the structure of this closing 
sentence, how praise is interwoven with all acceptable 
prayer. To the King, glorious, and eternal, and 
mighty, sovereignty, and majesty, and power are to 
be forever ascribed. But the ascription is not made, 
as a disconnected doxology set apart from the prayer 
which precedes it. Because of this claim and right 
on God's part, all the supplications for pardon and aid 
and supply that have preceded are now afresh urged. 
And the attributes of the Deity are wrapped, if we 
may be forgiven the saying, around the humble obla- 
tion and petition, which we venture to lay on (rod's 
altar. 

And is there not in this description of the Divine 
right to rule and shine, — to be honored and to be 
served, — another of those three-fold intimations so com- 
mon in the Scriptures, preparing the mind to receive 
the statements, elsewhere in Scripture explicitly made, 
of a mysterious and ineffable Trinity in the Divine 
Unity ? When God by Moses taught Israel to say, 
" Hear, Israel, the Lord your Grod is One God," was 
it not inexplicable, except on the supposition of some 
such dread distinction in the Divine Unity, that the 
Name which this Moses was instructed so often to usa 
10 



218 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

for Grod should be plural in its form — that so much 
should be said of the Angel of the Lord with whom 
and in whom the Lord was,— and that Psalms and 
Prophecies should paint the long promised and long 
awaited Messiah, as being clothed with so many dread 
and Divine prerogatives, and titles, and offices ? In 
the Levitical benediction, there was this triplicity of 
form. In the song of angels, heard by Isaiah, when 
the Lord filled the temple, there was a trine iteration 
©fthe "Holy" with which His angels hailed and 
lauded the King and Saviour of Israel. And, here, we 
have the kingdom. Now in Paul's Epistle to the 
Corinthians, in describing scenes beyond the Judgment, 
we have this reserved especially to the Father. We 
have the power. The New Testament speaks now of 
the Son, as having made all things by the word of His 
power, and by the same word upholding them ; and it 
also presents our Lord Jesus Christ as claiming after 
his resurrection that all power in Heaven and earth 
is committed to His hands. We have the glory. 
Now glory is the splendor, light, and irradiance of 
that which is excellent. Is not the Holy Spirit made 
in Scripture the great channel of light ? And if so, is 
it utterly unwarranted to think, that here may be the 
faint intimation of that great mystery, articulately 
and distinctly pronounced in the form and law of 
Christian baptism, which was to welcome disciples 
in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ? 
And if such allusion to the Triune character of God 
were here intended, we see wherefore the order of the 
kingdom, power, and glory, are here what they are, 



LECTURE IX. 219 

instead of their being put in the inverse order of the 
opening petitions, where the glory of the Divine Name 
stands first, and the kingdom of Grod comes next, and 
the will (answerable to the power by which that will 
is obeyed or enforced) comes last. To make the peti- 
tion the exact counterpart of the first branch of the 
Lord's Prayer, it would, then, have been, u For thine 
is the power, the kingdom, and the glory" — the power 
to secure that thy will be done—the kingdom, and 
therefore thy dominion must come- — and the glory, and 
therefore thy name shall have, from the incense clouds 
of the altar and from the furnace-mouth of the pit, its 
due halo of consecration and glory. But this, the lit- 
erary order, is departed from, that the attributes of 
the Trinity may appear in the closing plea according 
to the w T onted order of the three Divine Names, the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Grhost. 

3. But how, some Christian may inquire, shall this 
prayer remind us of Christ's atoning work, and of His 
priestly intercession ? The Saviour promised His dis- 
ciples, in allusion to the ladder seen by the patriarch 
Jacob in his slumbers at Bethel, that hereafter they 
should see Heaven opened, and angels ascending and 
descending on the Son of Man. Did you ever, my be- 
loved hearers, gaze on some glowing work of the pen- 
cil, that painted the opened gate of Heaven, and along 
the far-drawn pathway that led thither there lay huge 
cloud-like bars of light — solid blocks of that pure and 
massive radiance, that was seen by John paving the 
streets of the celestial city, "pure gold as it were 
transparent glass" where the pellucid crystal, and 



220 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the sunny metal, blended the best qualities of each, 
without their peculiar defects ? The broad prisms, in- 
frangible, translucent, and resplendent, lay like a ladder 
of glory, reaching from the earth that lay in gloom to 
the skies bursting with light. Even such seems to us 
the structure of this wondrous . a nd most comprehen- 
sive prayer, of which, as we think, Christ was not 
only the Framer, but Himself was, in His work as 
Victim, Mediator, and High Priest, the Framework, 
and the Support of every petition. Now the first half 
of the prayer is a descending along this ladder — from 
the foot of our Father's throne, — nay, — from out His 
encircling arms, and from off His bosom, whence the 
Fall reft us. We come down by petitions that ask, first, 
His glory — then, allude to His kingdom, and then, de- 
scending to the earth, peopled by His subjects, pray 
that on earth (thus at last reached as the lowermost 
round of the ladder) God's will may be done, even so 
as it is done by the seraph bands that press the top- 
most rounds of the ladder in Heaven. Then, the sup- 
pliant found thus prone and grovelling in his earthly 
body, and in his inherited guilt,' and in the sins and 
temptations and evils that surround him, — man, — 
from this his low position, beside the opening tomb, 
and the yawning abyss of Hell, — climbs up, by steps 
of gradual ascent, until his last syllable of prayer and 
his crowning ascription of praise touch the same top- 
most round of glory, whence the downward descent of 
the Mercy that sought him had begun. 

How did Christ connect Himself with, and virtually 
underlie by His sacrifice and intercession, all these 



LECTURE IX. 



22 1 



petitions ? We answer : His incarnation was the 
manifestation of the Divine glory. His Messiahship 
a preaching of the Kingdom of Grod. His sacrificed 
body was given up to vengeance, as a doing of the 
Father's will ; so Himself phrased it, in the terrible 
conflict of Grethsemane. Our daily food he taught us 
where to seek and how to sanctify. Our temptations 
He shared, and revealed to us the secret of foiling 
them ; and deliverance from evil, — for the body and 
for the soul, for this life and the life to come, — whence 
have we it, if not from Himself, the Deliverer, the 
Ransomer, and the Saviour of His people ? Yes, these 
steps for descending Mercy and ascending Hope — these 
blocks of solid glory — these beams of Heaven's own 
unsetting day — that, in this prayer, were dropped 
from our Father's upper home down upon our dark 
and low dungeon ; and along which, we, the heirs of 
Death and Hell, first slowly clamber, — and then bound, 
— and at last soar,— into the upper skies and the end- 
less life, were hewn from that one quarry — -from the 
Divine glories and the human sufferings of that one 
Saviour, worthy of supreme love and trust and wor- 
ship for evermore. He not only shaped the prayer, 
but sustains its every petition, buttressing the summit 
of the ladder on the throne of His original and equal 
Godhead ; and bracing the foot of that ladder against 
the cradle, the cross, and the tomb of his human in- 
carnation. 

You hope to enter heaven, my beloved hearer, but 
is it in leading a life of habitual prayerlessness ? Or 
can you expect to force your way into the gates oi 



222 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

light, in the neglect of that Redeemer who came to 
your earth and humbled himself to death, for the ex- 
press object of opening the One only possible Way for 
our doomed race to evade the bolt of Divine Justice ? 
The heart unchanged, the Bible unread, the knee un- 
bent, — prayerless, unregenerate, and Christless, — how 
can God so falsify himself, and stultify the word and 
cross of His Son, as to admit you to blessedness ? 
How can you cling to a hope like yours, that if it 
could by any possibility be authenticated, must depose, 
discrown, and unchrist the Son of God ; and prove his 
claims exaggerated, and his death needless? A sin- 
ner, entering Heaven without the atonement, must 
not only have uprooted the cross of Christ's humanity, 
but have overturned the Throne of His original and 
proper divinity. 

The word " Amen," used often by Christ himself as 
an oath, attests our sincerity. Of the same root with 
the Hebrew word for faith, it pledges, also, our trust 
in God's ability to hear and give. It is thus a test to 
try our spiritual condition, and an expression of de- 
vout reliance and earnest desire. With the words of 
Paul to the Ephesian disciples,^ let us then pray, 
" unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 

NAMED, THAT He WOULD GRANT (us) ACCORDING TO THE 

riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might 
sy his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may 
dwell in (our) hearts by faith ; that (we,) being 
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to compre- 

* Eph. iii. 14-21. 



LECTURE IX. 223 

hend with all saints what is the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height j and to know the 
love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that (we) 
might be filled with all the fulness of god. now 
unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly, 
above all that we ask or think, according to the 
power that worketh in us, unto hlm be glory in the 
church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world 
without end. Amen." 



^p p enHs. 



APPENDIX. 



Mots A.— Page 175.— Lect. VII. 

" The whole family in peril as they traverse it." 

From a distinguished thinker of the English Established 
Church, we copy the following remarks as to the reach and 
worth of Christian Intercession. As the work which furnishes 
the ensuing quotation has not been reprinted here, the passage 
is added, being remarkable alike, as to us it seems, for the 
breadth of its views, and the felicitous beauty of the language 
in which they are expressed, and the consolatory power to 
the solitary and tempted suppliant which they minister. The 
volume containing it is entitled " The Lord's Prayer ; 
Nine Sermons, preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn, by 
F. D. Maurice, Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, — London, 1848 ,r 

t! ' Lead us not into temptation.' strange and mysterious 
privilege, that some bed-ridden woman in a lonely garret, 
who feels that she is tempted to distrust the love and mercy 
of Him who sent His Son to die for the helpless, should 
wrestle with that doubt, saying the Lord's Prayer; and that 
she should be thus asking help lor those who are dwelling in 
palaces, who scarcely dream of want, yet in their own way 
are in peril great as hers ; for the student, who, in his chamber, 
is haunted with questions which would seem to her monstrous 



228 APPENDIX. 

and incredible, but which to him are agonizing ; for the 
divine in his terrible assaults from cowardice, despondency, 
vanity, from the sense of his own heartlessness, from the 
shame of past neglect, from the appalling discovery of evils in 
himself which he has denounced in others, from vulgar out- 
ward temptations into which he had proudly fancied that he 
could not fall, from dark suggestions recurring often, that 
words have no realities corresponding to them, that what he 
speaks of may mean nothing, because to him it has often 
meant so little. Of all this the sufferer knows nothing, yet 
for these she prays — and for the statesman who fancied the 
world could be moved by his wires, and suddenly finds that it 
has wires of its own which move without his bidding ; for 
her country under the pressure of calamities which the most 
skilful seek in vain to redress ; for all other countries in their 
throes of anguish which may terminate in a second death or 
a new life. For one and all she cries, ' Lead us not into 
temptation.' Their temptations and hers, different in form, 
are the same in substance. They, like her, are tempted to 
doubt that God is, and that He is the author of good, and not 
of evil ; and that He is mightier than the evil ; and that He can 
and will overthrow it, and deliver the universe out of it. This 
is the real temptation, there is no other. All events, all things 
and persons, are bringing this temptation before us ; no man 
is out of the reach of it who is in God's world ; no man is 
intended to be out of the reach of it who is God's child. He 
himself has led us into this wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil ; we cannot fly from it ; we cannot find in one corner 
of it a safety which there is not in another ; we cannot choose 
that we shall not have those temptations which are specially 
fitted to reach our own feelings, tempers, infirmities : they 
will be addressed to these ; they will be aimed at the heel or 
head, at whatever part has not been touched by the fire, and 



APPENDIX. 229 

is most vulnerable. We must not crave quarter from the 
enemy : to choose for ourselves where we shall meet him, is 
to desert that guardianship in which is all safety. But we 
may cry, ' Lead us not into Temptation :' and praying so 
we pray against ourselves, against our evil tendencies, our 
eagerness for that which will ruin us. Praying so, that which 
seemed to be poison becomes medicine ; all circumstances 
are turned to good ; honey is gathered out of the carcass ; 
death itself is made the minister of life." — Maukjce, pp. 98~ 
100, 



Note B.— Page 180.— Lect. VII. 

"Resist the Tempter.'" 

Few characters in the thronged gallery of British history 
display such high symmetry and such rare principle, and these 
meeting in an age of conflict, change and inconsistency, with 
such universal homage and confidence, alike from the parties 
for the time dominant and from those who were thwarted and 
overthrown, as does that of Sir Matthew Hale, the purest 
Judge, and among the greatest lawyers whom England ever 
bred. In his " Contemplations," which have been named in 
the Preface to this present volume, we seem to discover the 
secret training, by which that eminent jurist prepared himself 
in the closet, for the encounter of the tumultuous and ensnaring 
influences of the times in which he lived, honored of God and 
all good men. In the minuteness and fulness of his petitions 
upon this clause of the Lord's prayer, we seem to see the 
armory whence he furnished himself to walk unharmed, Loop- 
ing a good conscience, and earning a good name, in a day 
when it was difficult to retain cither, and seemingly impossi- 
ble to preserve both. 



230 APPENDIX. 

The use daily made of that volume in the household training 
of Washington, clothes it with new interest in the eyes of 
Americans. The most amazing trait in the character of the 
great Patriot and Captain of our Revolution, was the sobriety 
rising to majesty, and the balanced symmetry and equipoise 
of his powers, a trait in which his character seems to have 
been, directly or indirectly, formed upon that of Hale. As 
the work of the English Christian may be inaccessible to some 
of the readers of our volume, we draw from it the sentences, 
in which he paraphrases the petition for preservation from 
Temptation. (Contemplations Moral and Divine, by Sir 
Matthew Hale : London, 1682. Part II. p. 278, &c.) 
He speaks of prayer, as here virtually asking : — 
" That the Almighty and Eternal God who so far conde- 
scends unto us, as to offer His hand to lead us and His strength 
to support us, that sees all our ways, and our wanderings, and 
the snares that are spread for our feet, would be pleased to guide 
us by His hand and by His eye, that we may keep the true and 
old way ; and if any snares be laid there for us by the enemy 
of our peace, that he would either remove or break the snare, 
or lead us about by them or lift us over them; that He would be 
pleased to cleanse our hearts from our corruptions, the nursery 
of our temptations ; that He would prepare us and instruct and 
strengthen us, by His mighty Spirit, to discern and to oppose, 
and to overcome the deceits and seductions of our own hearts. 
To conclude therefore this part of this petition : — 
' Lord God Almighty, that beholdest all my ways, I find 
that I walk in the midst of snares and temptations. The 
great Enemy of my salvation, with his retinue, is continually 
about me, and watch for my halting, secretly and undiscover- 
ably soliciting my soul to sin against Thee, almost in every 
occurrence of my life, and every emotion of my mind ; and 
having in anything prevailed against me, either he quiets my 



APPENDIX. 231 

soul in my sin, or disorders my soul for it ; and, by both, pre- 
vents or diverts me from coming to Thee to seek my pardon, 
as a thing not necessary to be asked, or impossible to be gained. 
Again, the men, among whom I live, scatter their tempta- 
tions for me, by persuasions to sin, by evil examples, by suc- 
cess in sinful practices ; and, if there weie no devil or man to 
tempt me, yet I find in myself an everlasting seed of tempta- 
tions, a stock of corruptions that forms all 1 am, and all I have 
or do, even Thy very mercies into temptations. When I con- 
sider Thy patience and goodness to me, I am tempted to pre- 
sumption, to supineness, to an opinion of my own worth ; when 
I consider or find Thy justice, I am tempted to murmuring, 
to despair, to think the most Sovereign Lord a hard master. 
In my understanding, I am tempted to secret argumentations, 
to atheism, to infidelity, to dispute Thy truth, to curiosity, to 
impertinent or forbidden inquiries. If I have learning, it 
makes me proud, apt to despise the purity and simplicity of 
Thy truth , to contend for mastery not for truth, to use my wit 
to reason myself or others into errors or sins, to spend my time 
in those discoveries that do not countervail the expense, nor 
are of any value or use to my soul after death. In my ivill, 
I find much averseness to what is good, a ready motion to 
everything that is evil, or at least an uncertain fluctuation 
between both. In all my thoughts I find abundance of van- 
ity ; when employed to any thoughts of most concernment 
about my soul, full of inconsistency, unfixed, unsettled, easily 
mingled with gross apprehensions. When I look into my 
conscience, I find her easily bribed, and brought over to the 
wrong party, allayed with self-love, if not wholly silent, un- 
profitable and dead. In my affections, I find continued dis- 
order, easily misplaced, and more easily overacted beyond the 
bounds of moderation, reason and wisdom, much more of 
Christianity and Thy fear. In my sensual appetites I find a 



232 APPENDIX. 

continual fog and vapor rising from it, disordering my soul in 
all I am about, with unseasonable, importunate, and foul ex- 
halations, that darken and pollute it ; that divert and disturb 
it in all that is good, that continually solicit it to all sensual 
evils, unto all immoderation and excess. In my senses, I have 
an eye full of wantonness, full of covetousness, full of haughti- 
ness ; an ear full of itching after novelties, impertinencies, 
vanities ; a 'palate full of intemperance, studious for curiosi- 
ties ; a hand full of violence, when it is in my power ; a 
tongue full of unnecessary, vain words, apt to slander, to 
whisper, full of vain-glory and self-flattery. If thou givest 
me a healthy, strong body, I am ready to be proud of it ; apt 
to think myself out of the reach of sickness or death : it keeps 
me from thinking of my latter end, or providing for it ; I am 
ready to use that strength to the service of sin, with better 
advantage, more excess, and less remorse. If thou visitest me 
with sickness, I am surprised with peevishness, impatience, 
with solicitous care touching my estate, and posterity, and 
recovery ; and my thoughts concerning Thee are less frequent, 
less profitable than before, though my necessity be greater. 
If Thou givest me plenty, I am apt to be proud, insolent ; 
confident in my wealth, reckoning upon it as my treasure, 
think every thought lost that is not employed upon it, or, in 
order to increase it, loth to think of death or judgment. If 
Thou visitest me with poverty, I am apt to murmur, to count 
the rich happy, to cast off Thy service as unprofitable, to look 
upon my everlasting hopes as things at a distance, imaginary 
comforts under real wants. If Thou givest me reputation 
and esteem in the world, I am apt to make use of it to beai 
me out at a pinch in some unlawful action, to use it to mis- 
lead others, to use any base shifts to support it. If Thou cast 
me into reproach and ignominy, my heart is apt to swell 
against the means, to study revenge, and to die with my repu* 



APPENDIX. 



233 



tation, though it may causelessly be lost, and to have the 
thoughts and remembrances of it to interfere and grate upon 
my soul, even in my immediate service to Thee : any cross 
sours my blessings, and carries my heart so violently into dis- 
content, (fpr, it may be, a single affliction which I deservedly 
suffer,) that I forget to be thankful for a multitude of other 
mercies, which I undeservedly enjoy. If I am about a good 
duty, I find my heart tempted to perform them carelessly, 
formally, negligently, hypocritically, vain-gloriously, for false 
or by-e ids ; and when I have done them, my heart is puffed 
up with pride, opinion of merit ; looking upon my Maker as 
my debtor for the duty I owe Him, and yet but slightly and 
defectively performed to Him. How then can I expect power 
from myself to resist a temptation without, when I find so 
much treachery within me ? I therefore beseech thee, most 
merciful and powerful Father, to send into my heart the grace 
and strength of Thy blessed Spirit to resist and overcome all 
my temptations, to cleanse and purge this foul heart of mine, 
of this brood and nest of lust and corruptions that are within 
it ; to strengthen myself against the temptations of hell, the 
world and myself ; to lead me in safe paths ; to discover and 
admonish me hourly of all the dangers that are in my way ; 
and so by Thy mighty and overruling Providence to guide me 
that I may avoid all occasions of falling ; so to order, and 
overrule and moderate, and temper all the occurrences of my 
life, that they may be suitable to that grace Thou givest me, 
to bear them without offending Thee ; and if thou at any 
time suffer me to take a fall, yet deliver me from presumptu- 
ous sins, give me a heart speedily to fly to Thee for strength 
to restore me, for mercy to pardon me.' " — Meditations on the 
Lord's Prayer, pp. 278-282. 

The preceding extracts show what a study and science with 



234 APPENDIX. 

Hale it was to order his conversation aright; and how the 
excellence that walked in such serene, stainless majesty before 
the world, thrived upon and grew out of the most lowly and 
contrite acknowledgments of native weakness and guilt be- 
fore his God. The calm equipoise externally manifested was 
the crowning result of earnest warfare within ; and although 
in his relations to G-od his settled peace was a gift, the free 
boon of Divine grace, yet seen on another side, and in his re- 
lations to mankind and himself, that peace was a conquest, 
the fruit of protracted strife, and kept by unremitting vigi- 
lance. 



Note C— Page 183.— Lect. Till. 

11 Some would alter the rendering here, and make this a 
prayer against the Evil One.'' 1 

Tholuck's admirable Commentary upon the Sermon on 
the Mount, (Edinburgh Bibl. Cabinet, vol. xx. p. 214, &c.,) 
recounts the various opinions of the most distinguished expos- 
itors on this question. He decides for the larger and indefi- 
nite sense, making it inclusive of all wickedness, and of evil 
as well as wickedness. 

Against the supposition that Satan was the subject of 
express and exclusive reference here, Stier, to whose work 
allusion has been made in the Preface, enters his indignant 
protest. (Stibr, Reden d. Herrn Jesu I. 218.) His sense 
of holy fitness revolts at the thought, that, — when our Saviour, 
although Himself the Author, and the Channel and the End 
of all acceptable prayer, had, as was natural here, left out 
His own Name, — He should call on his children to give to 
His and their enemy Satan the honor of expressly naming 
Stier supposes that the Christian is, indeed, in his 



APPENDIX. 235 

thoughts, to include a reference, when praying against Evil, 
to the Tempter, its promoter and Author, but any such explicit 
allusion, or word, seems to him utterly inadmissible. " The 
Devil's Kingdom" is to be put down, "the Devil's Will" 
thwarted ; but he is not to have such honor, or God's children 
endure the shame, that the Enemy's name must, in this brief 
prayer, be pronounced, when the Redeemer's own is with- 
holden. 

Among the many instances of " emendation" for the worse 
in Dr. Conquest's Bible, " with nearly twenty thousand 
emendations. London, 1841," he has at this place, " Deliver 
us from the Evil One." 



Note D.— Page 188.— Lect. VIII. 
" The one sad monotonous cry : ' Deliver us fro??i Evil.' " 

From the same work of Maurice, already quoted, we annex 
the following remarks upon the petition for Deliverance from 
Evil :— 

" When a man prays, ' Lead us not into temptation,' he 
prays against himself; prays that he may not go where he 
has an inclination to go ; prays that neither he nor his 
brethren may have what they have a false taste for, even 
though God's hand seems to offer it to them. Such a prayer 
till we know something of ourselves, something of His purpose 
in placing us here, must needs appear strange and perplexing. 
Is not the one which follows it altogether different ; the 
simplest, most spontaneous utterance of the heart ; one which 
all the world has been pouring forth ; which we should cer- 
tainly have learned though no one had taught it to us ? 

" It would be idle, indeed, to deny the universality of this 
prater, Wherever men are visited by any storm or fire, or 



236 APPENDIX. 

earthquake ; wherever they are plagued with any bodily 
sickness ; wherever they are oppressed by their fellow-men ; 
wheiever tli3y have a vague sense of being crushed by fortune ; 
wherever they have learnt to look upon custom or law as an 
incubus ; wherever they are stifled by systems ; wherever 
they are conscious of a remorse which stays with them and 
moves with them ; there is a cry ascending to some power 
known or unknown, 'Deliver us from Evil/ The question 
what evil is and whence it comes, is for such sufferers of easy 
solution ; they know well what they mean by it ; they know 
or guess generally what brought it to them, at all events it 
has overtaken them. They may suppose that some fellow- 
creature can rescue them from it, or chance, or themselves ; 
they may look to the physician, the priest, the legislator ; to 
alterations in government ; to new dispositions of property ; 
to a friendly executioner ; to suicide. But a deliverer there 
must be ; something or some person to hope in. If once we 
believe evil to be omnipotent, or suppose that it was intended 
for us, and we for it, I do not think it possible to conceive of 
human society or human life. Recollect the worship of every 
country you ever heard of, how many names or characteristics 
of the different divinities had relation to the deliverance or 
to the averting or the avenging of wrong. If you took these 
away from the mythologies, you would find that there 
remained a mere caput mortuum ; all that had held them 
together and appealed to human trust and sympathies would 
have escaped: 

" Now it would surely be a very hard and stoical doctrine to 
proclaim that what these different creatures of our flesh and 
blood have cried to be saved from, were not really evils, but 
only certain conditions of existence, which they fancied to be 
such. No one, I should think, can imagine that he served 
truth by maintaining such a proposition against the sense of 



APPENDIX. 237 

mankind, and against the witness of his own heart. That 
from which men have revolted as utterly unnatural and in- 
consistent and unreasonable, that which they have felt to be 
in positive disagreement with their constitution, they have a 
right to call an evil ; and all the theories, political, philo- 
sophical, religious, in the world, can never deprive them of the 
right. Nor can these theories, so far as I can see. prove even 
the most extravagant hopes that our race have indulged to 
Le utterly vain and delusive, or take from any man the right 
to seek deliverance from human helpers, kings, lawgivers, 
shepherds of the people ; from his own strong arm, from 
invisible helpers, from some fate that is higher, sterner, more 
inflexible than all other powers. There was a warrant for 
all such hopes, even for hope from the last resource of self- 
destruction. We have no right to take away such, refuges 
until we can provide a better ; and it is at least probable that 
if a better be found, we shall find some explanation of all the 
rest. 

" We may readily grant them, not only that the prayer has 
been offered in all places and in all ages, but that in all 
places and in all ages a deep truth has been expressed in it. 
But do we, therefore, say that the prayer had no need to be 
taught, that it sprang up naturally in the mind of man with- 
out any inspiration from above, that it was not like the 
former, the petition of a man against himself, but altogether 
one from and for himself? I rather think the evidence, if it 
is well considered, will lead us just to the opposite conclusion ; 
that the prayer was, in all cases, taught and inspired from 
above ; that what was contributed to it by the natural heart 
of man in his different circumstances and positions, was just 
the false, confused element of it, just that which narrowed its 
scope and divided its object ; that in its true sense and pur- 
port it is in perfect accordance with the cry against temptation j 



238 APPENDIX. 

that He who imparted it to men in the cid time was He who 
gave it to His disciples in its clearness and purity, in its length 
and breadth when He said, ' After this manner pray ye : Our 
Father — deliver us from evil.' 

" Other portions of the Lord's Prayer have led me to remark, 
that there is a fearful tendency in us all, which has infused 
itself most mischievously into our theology, to look first at 
our necessity or misery, only afterwards at our relation to 
God, and at His nature. The last are made dependent upon 
the former. We are conscious of a derangement in our con- 
dition ; simply in reference to this derangement do we con- 
template Him who we hope may reform it. We have just 
been tracing this process in heathenism. A mischief is felt ; 
if there is a mischief there must be a deliverer. Undoubtedly 
the conscience bears this witness, and it is a right one. But 
the qualities of the deliverer are determined by the character 
or locality of that which is to be redressed, or by the habits 
of those who are suffering from it. From this heathenish 
habit of mind the Lord's Prayer is the great preserver. Say 
first, ' Our JFather.' This relation is fixed, established, 
certain. It existed in Christ before all worlds, it was mani- 
fested when He came in the flesh. He is ascended on high, 
that we may claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all 
our thoughts upon these opening words ; till we know them 
well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest. Let us go on 
carefully, step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the Will, 
assuring ourselves of our footing, confident that we are in a 
region of clear unmixed goodness ; of goodness which is to be 
hallowed by us ; which has come and shall come to us, and 
in us ; which is to be done on earth, not merely in Heaven. 
Then we are in a condition to make these petitions, which we 
are ordinarily in such haste to utter, and which He, in whom 
all wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all comes 



APPENDIX. 239 

this ' Deliver us from Evil.' When we are able tc look 
upon evil, not as the regular normal state of the universe, but 
as absolutely at variance with the character of its Author, 
with His constitution of it, with the Spirit which He has given 
to us, then we can pray, attaching some real significance to 
the language, Deliver us from it. Then we shall understand 
why men looked with faith to the aid of their fellow-men ; to 
princes, and chieftains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were 
sent into the world for this end, upon this mission. They 
were meant to act as deliverers. They were to be witnesses 
of a real righteous order, and to resist all transgressors of it. 
We can understand why strong men felt that they had better 
act for themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For the 
Father of all put their strength into them, that they might 
wield it as His servants in His work ; it was His Spirit who 
made them conscious of their strength, and of that purpose 
for which they were to use it. We can see why these hopes 
were so continually disappointed though they had so right a 
foundation ; why they were driven to think of higher aid, of 
invisible champions, because those upon the earth proved 
feeble, or deserted the cause, and served themselves. It is 
true that the hosts of heaven are obeying that power which 
the hosts of earth are commanded to obey ; that they are 
doing His service by succoring those who are toiling below ; 
it is true, because He who rules all is not a destiny, but a 
loving will ; not an abstraction, but a person ; not a mere 
sovereign, but a Father. All creation is ordered upon this 
law of mutual dependence and charity ; but it is only in the 
knowledge and worship of the Highest, that we can apprehend 
the places and tasks of the lower ; when He is hidden, these 
are forgotten ; society becomes incoherent ; nothing under- 
stands itself; everything is inverted ; the deliverer is one 
with the tyrant ; evil and good run into each other ; wo 



240 APPENDIX. 

'nvoke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, wha*, a restora 
tive, regenerative power lies in this prayer! See what need 
there was. that the Son of God should come from the bosom 
of the Father, to make men know that they were not orphans, 
to show how they might be in act, and not merely in idea, 
children ! "—Maurice, pp. 103-108. 

Unless we misread his purpose, this gifted and compre- 
hensive thinker has had in view, throughout the preceding 
sentences, the principles of Hero Worship* which seem to 
pervade the powerful writings of Thomas Carlyle, and the 
Essays of his American disciple, Emerson. And the views 
of the Christian philosopher have to us a breadth and com- 
pleteness, and consistency as to the design of Providence in 
raising up such sages and rulers, the gifted leaders of their 
fellows, which are lacking in the rugged and bold, but frag- 
mentary, and even contradictory portraitures of Heroes by 
the writers above named. They picture vividly headlands ; 
but betwixt these all is chaos. He maps the coast that 
includes and connects these, the currents sweeping past them, 
and the shoals or reefs that may lie in their shadow. The 
one class of thinkers paint a Panorama that leaves its impres- 
sions indeed ; but they are transient, and practically of little 
avail. The other furnishes a chart, which the voyager may 
daily study, and in the use of which he is not in danger of 
mistaking the Maelstrom of Pantheism for the current that is 
to bear him to his desired haven and home. The one class 
seem virtually but to leave as their lesson, the need of blind 
homage and subjugation to earth's great men ; a vague prayer 
for the Coming Man of the age, and an oath of allegiance 
sworn to him in advance. The other shows the right and 
joy of trusting and adoring the Greater God, Him, once in- 
* See p. 40. 



APPENDIX. 241 

deed known as the Coming Man — " He that was to come" — 
but now proclaimed as surely and fully Come — the God- 
Man 3 — the world's one Great Deliverer and Redeemer — the 
Maker and Controller and Final Judge of earth's greatest 
ones, absolute sovereign of the captains and teachers who 
have been the worst and the best of the earth's human celebri- 
ties. The one class dazzle our eyes with gorgeous fire-works, 
but they are " of the earth, earthy," soaring for a short flight, 
and a speedy fall. The other shows the old, steadfast stars 
shining behind the transient glitter, and points us to the streaks 
in the east of that Sun of Righteousness, whose glorious rising, 
" with healing in His wings," is to drown all these lesser 
splendors ; the Comtng God, whose appearance in judgment 
shall close and vindicate the mysteries of His earthly Provi- 
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